NIPM and Offline System

[bienieck]

Is it possible to run NIPM on offline systems in such a way that it doesn't search for anything on the external network? I don't know, maybe flag? Currently, if I run NIPM on an offline system I have to wait for a very long timeout before the application starts and it is annoying. I know I can use NIPM CLI but sometimes it is just easier to do something with a GUI.

[Scott_Richardson · Accepted solution]

The "nipkg.enable-NI-connectivity" option mentioned in this post might help: NI Package Manager 2023 Q3 released! and it is documented here.

[SteenSchmidt]

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@bienieck wrote:

Is it possible to run NIPM on offline systems in such a way that it doesn't search for anything on the external network? I don't know, maybe flag? Currently, if I run NIPM on an offline system I have to wait for a very long timeout before the application starts and it is annoying. I know I can use NIPM CLI but sometimes it is just easier to do something with a GUI.

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For curiosity I can mention that NI treated it as a bug when LabVIEW behaved the same way (LabVIEW splash screen waited to connect to the NI news RSS feed upon LabVIEW launch). Of course NI Package Manager GUI should be usable immediately upon launch, but that feedback has been given to NI for a decade now without response. We do not use NIPM if we can avoid it.

[Scott_Richardson]

NIPM's initial and current design is to retrieve the list of all packages in registered feeds and updates its cached lists of those packages, which is used for updating the Updates and Packages tabs. One of the delays that you may experience is that if a system contains a lot of feeds, this takes time.

The above option will disable any of the NI feeds that were automatically added by an installation of NI software. I could see NI redesigning that startup and any refresh workflow to potentially lazily refresh and prevent use of the Updates and Packages tabs until that refresh is complete.

[SteenSchmidt]

I can just say (again) that it routinely takes NIPM 10-15 minutes to progress beyond its splash screen with a spinner running, even when I’ve simply double clicked an NI package to install it. It doesn’t even bother to check if the package I double clicked already has all necessary resources available, so it can go ahead and just install the thing and be done with it.