Using static VI references in an application

Question

Hello all you helpful forum-goers!
I am using 4 different static VI references hooked directly to "Run VI" invoke nodes, with the "Wait Until Done" and "Auto Dispose Ref" parameters both False, to run four VIs dynamically, each of which does nothing except call my re-entrant serial port input/output VI with a different COM port index number.  Overall this is working pretty well.  However, I have a couple questions about improving my setup.
1) Is it possible to somehow set an input parameter to the re-entrant serial port VI, and thereby be able to Invoke it directly four times in a for loop, each with a different input value?  I'm not sure how I would do that, except that I've heard that you can set the value of a control of a VI using a reference to it.  I also worry that using the same static VI reference to Invoke the VI 4 times would somehow re-start the same dynamic VI instance 4 times, instead of spawning 4 copies of it.  However, this solution would allow me to delete the 4 VIs which do nothing except call the re-entrant VI, and my code would be simpler and more expandable (e.g. making it easy to interact with 8 serial ports in the future just by increasing the number of for loop iterations).
2) It seems to be required for me to add the 4 VIs which I Invoke dynamically to my lvproj file, and then add to the "Always Included" section of my application build properties in order for them to be included in my application executable.  This was what I had to do in previous versions of my code when I referenced the VIs via a path name, but now that I changed to using static VI references, I thought they would be included automatically.  LabVIEW already knows to automatically load them in memory (e.g. when I do a search it searches them even when they are not open), and they are included in the Dependencies list in my LabVIEW project, so why would they not be built in to my executable?  I'd prefer not to have to add them explicitly, as it is just one more thing to forget if I change it in the future.  Is there a setting or something somewhere which I can change so that they will be included in the executable automatically?
Thank you very much for your time and assistance, as always!
-Joe
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Answer 1

Nope.  If you look at the Help for the "Run VI" method, you find the following information for "Auto Dispose Ref":
"If TRUE, the target VI detaches the reference from the main VI.  When the target VI finishes executing, LabVIEW automatically disposes of the reference, along with the parallel data space.  If FALSE, the main VI retains control of the target VI."
So by setting "Auto dispose" to T, you pass control of the reference to the subVI itself, and LabVIEW will dispose of the reference when the subVI finishes running.
I will second Jeff and urge you to get rid of the global variable!  I haven't used a global variable in something like 14 years.  I haven't needed to.  Myself, I love a good notifier and would urge you to use a notifier instead of a queue if you're going to be spawning VIs.  Why?  Because the first instance of your spawned VI to receive the "stop" message from the queue will remove that message from the queue, thus preventing the other instances from receiving the message.  So you'll have to send the message repeatedly and hope that everyone eventually receives it.  If you use a notifier, anything that contains a "Wait on Notification" with that notifier reference will receive the message.  I think you want multiple listeners here, right?
Ok, this afternoon I'll try to write some dummy code with a statically called VI in it, compile it into an exe, and see if I can duplicate your problem...
One question, were you just using the static VI reference by itself to call your VI, or were you using it the same way I showed in my earlier post, with "Open VI reference"?  I'm just trying to look for differences between what I've done in the past which has worked, and what you're doing now which isn't working...
Jeff, what say you?