migration from CVI LabWindows

[ElectroLund]

Hello everyone!  I'm a 10-year developer of LabWindows applications for my company.  With recent rumors that the platform is being shuttered, I'm considering migration to LabVIEW.  

I wondered if you have any thoughts about such a plan?  Personal experience?

[billko]

Ouch.  LabVIEW and LabWindows are similar in name only.  Since LabWindows is essentially a collection of tools (and a UI) for C and LabVIEW is a language unto itself, there isn't really a path except to rewrite everything in LabVIEW.  That being said, maybe you can convert LabWindows functions into DLLs to call.  Hopefully this link can give you ideas?

Sorry, I'm unfamiliar with LabWindows so I cannot vouch for its veracity.

[ElectroLund]

I basically knew the answer before asking it... rewrite is in order.  That's why I'm posturing myself toward "only new projects" shall be authored in LabVIEW, with maintenance of existing applications be siloed in our remaining seats of LabWindows.

As regards DLL option for CVI, I've been down this road already.  Works nicely, provided that the LabVIEW caller install the free CVI Runtime Engine.  I had to go through this exercise a number of years ago for a customer that wanted to communicate with our product (which uses a custom binary serial protocol), and they used LabVIEW for all their final build testing.  That was a successful project.

[zou]

You have to re-create GUI in LabVIEW.  So only non-GUI related code can be put into a dll.

[ElectroLund]

That's not fully accurate.  I've found that I can pack LabWindows GUI panels/controls into a DLL, such that the caller can then open them and interact.  The CVI runtime includes all its GUI elements.

[zou]

You want to migrate to LabVIEW, but still depend on CVI?

[ElectroLund]

Yeah, I have about 10 years of CVI development invested for this site.  A few dozen codebases, a few hundred thousand lines of code.  So packaging some of those into DLLs is attractive.

[zou]

So when you talking about migrate to LabVIEW, what part of your work you want to migrate?

[ElectroLund]

I would be looking at:

1) All new projects develop in LV.  If there are any dependencies on hardware or systems previously developed in CVI, use a CVI DLL.

2) Slowly migrate old CVI applications into LV in the next 5 years.