Frustratingly Long Build Time In Labview!!!

[jph399]

Hi my team is using Labview for our programming environment and I find that once I start to

build the program in order to place on the cRIO it takes over an hour to build!

When it finally does finish building and I run it as a startup on the cRIO which only takes about a

minute and then the program works just fine on the bot.

I was hoping that someone would know what is causing the build to take forever and give me a possible solution to the problem

because at one of our regionals I noticed that other team"s build process takes only about a minute or so!!

Please help.

thank you

[sciencewhiz]

It sounds like you may be having the same (or similar) problem that I was having in Problem building/deploying when using Point by Point filters. See if the workaround in that thread works.

[jph399]

Thank you, that would make sense to check those boxes to ignore unused parts of the code.

But, I have one question; when you checked those boxes did anything in your code that was

a working part of your program get removed or stopped working?(like your filters)?

Im just wondering because how does Labview know whether the parts of the code that it ignores

are a crucial part of your code.?

[sciencewhiz]

It doesn't remove things from the code, rather it removes things from the same library that aren't used in your code. In my case, the filters library was huge, but I only used one tiny part of it. Rather then trying to build the entire library, it only built the parts I used.

I noticed no ill affects.

[Jennifer_R]

Hi jph399,

Did checking the option to "remove unused members of project libraries" in the build specification improve the compile time?  As sciencewhiz explained, this does not remove anything that is used in your application; it only removes the additional library components which aren't needed.  This can be especially useful if you are working with VIs from the Mathematics or Signal Processing palettes which are part of the Advanced Analysis Library.  (If you go to LabVIEW 8.5\vi.lib\Analysis, you will should find several NI_AAL libraries and can see for yourself just how many VIs the libraries contain.)

If you still see long build times after changing the build specification, please do post back.

Regards,

Jennifer

[jph399]

Thank you both I appreciate all of your help,

After I checked those boxes, build time still takes about 5 minutes, but that is WAY faster than before (when it would usually take an hour).

I might even take out those filters in my code, they are not completely neccesary.

I'll be able to run it on thursday at the 10,000 lakes regional and see if it works.

Thanks again.

[Pikat]

Are you supposed to check "Remove unused polymorphic VI instances," "Remove unused members of project libraries," or both?  Somehow unchecking both of them gives me faster build times... Is this normal?

Thanks!

[Jennifer_R]

Hi Pikat,

Both options you mentioned help minimize the size of the built application.  Since the processing and analysis VIs have been found to increase build times with LabVIEW FRC, it was specifically recommended to remove the unused members of their (large) project libraries.

Polymorphic VIs are VIs that accept different data types or have different selectable instances.  For example, the Open2Motor VI has two different instances: Open2MotorWithJaguar and Open2MotorWithVictor.  "Remove unused polymorphic VI instances" looks at individual VIs and removes the instances that are not included in the code.

Leaving both options unchecked has resulted in improved build times in some tests.  The developers are looking into how each selection affects the timing.  I would experiment with different application properties and go with whichever settings seem to work best with your specific application.

Regards,

Jennifer

[Pikat]

Thanks for the quick response.  Will not checking the two options make the built code larger, thus increasing the download time?