Upgrade woes
Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 11:25 am
Hello,
I'm using InstallAware to manage the deployment of a fairly complex, commercial product that requires manipulation of data structures, web applications and services, various operating system permissions, custom windows services, and more.
As a result of this complexity, I cannot upgrade my software by simply un-installing the product and installing the newer version. What I need to do is upgrade the existing installation "in place"; this involves updating db schema, replacing various files, etc.
So what I've done with my InstallAware script is to first comment out the code that un-installs the previous version. Then I use the NEEDSUPGRADE variable to determine what actions to take during the remainder of the script execution.
The problem I'm having is this - I can't get the installation to actually replace the existing product files, even though I'm 100% certain that the files I'm installing are newer than the ones that already exist on the target system.
The documentation for the Install Files command states that "Windows Installer's default behavior is to overwrite files on the target system if the ones you are copying are newer". But I'm not seeing this behavior. In fact, the installation appears to complete successfully, but without ever replacing the older files with the newer ones.
Not sure if I'm missing something obvious, but I'm really baffled by this.
I'm using InstallAware 6 build gwinnett_sp2.083006.
I'm using InstallAware to manage the deployment of a fairly complex, commercial product that requires manipulation of data structures, web applications and services, various operating system permissions, custom windows services, and more.
As a result of this complexity, I cannot upgrade my software by simply un-installing the product and installing the newer version. What I need to do is upgrade the existing installation "in place"; this involves updating db schema, replacing various files, etc.
So what I've done with my InstallAware script is to first comment out the code that un-installs the previous version. Then I use the NEEDSUPGRADE variable to determine what actions to take during the remainder of the script execution.
The problem I'm having is this - I can't get the installation to actually replace the existing product files, even though I'm 100% certain that the files I'm installing are newer than the ones that already exist on the target system.
The documentation for the Install Files command states that "Windows Installer's default behavior is to overwrite files on the target system if the ones you are copying are newer". But I'm not seeing this behavior. In fact, the installation appears to complete successfully, but without ever replacing the older files with the newer ones.
Not sure if I'm missing something obvious, but I'm really baffled by this.
I'm using InstallAware 6 build gwinnett_sp2.083006.