Install versioning strategy

[D MMacPherson]

We have used a product version strategy with InstallShield for many years that has worked well for us and I was hoping to mimic the same with our new InstallAware Express purchase. We use a year numbering approach and only post full installations, not partial update patches. With InstallShield, it is easy to identify what product versions and builds need to be updated (and/or uninstalled/replaced) as part of the installation design process. Cannot find a way to achieve the same with InstallAware. Here is the scenario:

- A user is running existing Product 19.03.0141 (built and installed in 2019)
- We build a full installation of 20.01.0142 (the first build release and full installation in 2020)
- The user then runs the full Product 20.01 installation, which automatically uninstalls the 19.03 installation (EXE, shortcuts, everything) and replaces it with the 20.03.

We can use the same full 20.01 installation for a new user, of course. A tweak to the above is that we can also use the full installation for product year build updates (e.g., 20.02, uninstalling and replacing 20.01).

Our installations are generally pretty small (less than 20 MB), so we can get away with asking users to grab full installation downloads. As said, this approach has work extremely well for us for may years, and I would like to continue with this approach.

So, can anyone advise how to set this up? Thanks!

[FrancescoT]

Things are even simpler in IA.

InstallAware uses the REVISIONCODE to identify each build of a setup package.
•Press SHIFT+CTRL+F11.

revision_code2.png (19.96 KiB) Viewed 1845 times

Enter a unique identifier for your setup here. Click the Generate button to create a new unique identifier if you are not sure that the displayed identifier is unique. The Revision Code must be unique for each different setup. Unless each setup you build has a unique code, they will appear to be the same installation package to Windows Installer, even when they are not. Even slightly different versions of your setup must have a unique revision code. You can have InstallAware automatically update this code every time you rebuild your setup project using the Build Settings window.

So by default implementation, the REVISIONCODE gets re-generated automatically on each build. This has the effect that at setup runtime, each build gets then detect as new full product update. Of course, you may turn OFF the automatic re-generation of the REVISIONCODE when necessary (From the same Option Dialog, select Build node -> Output, for the "Change revision code automatically upon rebuild" option).

That said in your case, to produce a new full update you simply need to generate a new build of your setup. At setup runtime, this will full replace any existing version of the same product which is found installed.

In addition, I may suggest you to have a look at the following thread for other useful information about the matter.
https://www.installaware.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10734

Hope this helps you