Questions about Updating without Uninstalling

[Sheri_Steeves]

Hello,

In the past when creating update builds we've always uninstalled the entire product and re-installed the update. Now we would like to do an "in-place update" so that we only update the components that have changed.

We don't want to build patches as each "update" should also be a complete install if a previous version is not installed.

All the installs I've done so far have been with MSI. I was thinking of handling the prerequisite and maintenance steps my self to not remove the previous installation, and then allow the install to proceed.

Is this possible to do with InstallAware? Would NATIVE ENGINE work better?

Thanks

[FrancescoT]

You can surely use Native Engine for this.

For example, you can create a script which runs a series of typical installation tasks without registering any product as installed. You can even update the files of any of your installed products, and without having to uninstall any of them. Of course, you should exclusively update your files and without removing or adding any new components. This mainly to not alter the installed application.