Darren's Weekly Nugget 10/12/2009

[Darren]

There are a lot of settings you can customize in the LabVIEW environment.  I talk about some of my favorite options in this nugget.  A lot of my favorite options settings are not the defaults, and it would be a big pain if I had to go through Tools > Options and change all my settings each time I installed a new LabVIEW version, or used LabVIEW on another computer.  Thankfully, there's an easy way to copy your settings from one LabVIEW version to the next.  On Windows, you can simply copy the LabVIEW.ini file (in your Program Files\National Instruments\[LabVIEW version] folder) from one LabVIEW installation over to another LabVIEW installation, and all your preferences (which consist almost entirely of Tools > Options settings) will be copied over to the new LabVIEW version.  In fact, I can't remember the last time I went in to Tools > Options to change one of my favorite settings, because I've been copying over my INI file for years now.  Oh wait, yes I can remember...it was when I took my CLD and CLA exams and couldn't bring my INI file with me... 🙂

For Mac and Linux, I don't remember the exact location of the preferences file, but you can use the attached VI (LabVIEW 7.0 and later) to retrieve the path of your LabVIEW preferences file.  Note that this VI contains a private property to get the preferences file path, but I've put the wheels in motion to make this property public in a future LabVIEW version.

Another note about Mac and Linux.  On Mac, you'll actually need to rename the preferences file when you copy it, as LabVIEW preferences files on Mac contain the version in their filenames.  On Linux however, there is a single preferences file for *all* LabVIEW installs for a particular user.  So you'll only need to copy the file if you want to share preference settings between users.

[GuenterMueller]

I do not remember which paper said, that I might miss anything when copying a LabVIEW.ini from version x to x+1. For that reason, I have never tried it out. I would not expect any problems, as the nature of an ini is quite simple and there should be no reason for LabVIEW to complain in case it does not understand a setting.
So copying a LabVIEW.ini from one installation to another is familiar to me.

Have you made good experiences when copying the ini from version x to version y (with x<y or x>y)?
Guenter

[Darren]

I have never had any problems copying LabVIEW.ini files in either direction as far as versions are concerned.  The only issue I can think of is that if you use File > Open to open items in your LabVIEW folder, the paths stored in the INI file for the most recently used projects/VIs are absolute paths, so you may run the risk of accidentally opening VIs from the wrong LabVIEW folder.

[GuenterMueller]

Thanks, Darren, for reminding me that there might be absolute paths in the ini.
It is good practice to delete them before using an ini with a different version of LabVIEW.
Guenter

[sth]

Since they are absolute paths they can move from one version to the other unless they point within the LabVIEW hierarchy itself.  In that case the paths would have to be edited.  Moving from machine to machine can be a bit hazardous on the Mac since the *(^(*&^ way that they handle Carbon paths means that the machine name is part of the path.

It is fairly easy to go through the ini file and find the absolute paths that need tweaking.  The different names for different versions of the preferences is brilliant in keeping the differences around when running multiple versions.  In addition, Marc made life really easy by making the Mac version of LV handle either ":" or "=" as a token separator.  This makes moving between platforms easier.

[tom.huo]

Oh, thanks for your sharing.

Could you upload you configration file for us.

[DFGray]

I have run into issues with source code control when copying ini files from one version of LabVIEW to another.  Be careful with these settings.  If you tweak them before opening the new version of LabVIEW, you should be fine.