Using IA7 and IA9 on the build server at the same time

[andrejzr]

Hello,

Before we upgrade from IA7 to IA9, we need to make sure that we do not break any of the existing installations. We have several products, that are being built on a build server, with tested installation scripts built on IA7.

For some new projects, IA9 would be a good choice. However,I do not know if we can configure the build server to have both IA7 and IA9 running. Upgrading all of the installers to IA9 would require a lot of retesting, which is hard to justify.

Is it possible to have both versions installed?

Thanks
Andrej

[MichaelNesmith]

No, because resources like plug-ins are shared, this is not supported. Why not test how your setups perform with the latest version of 9 R2?

[andrejzr]

Hi,

Thank you for your prompt answer.

The reason why not test is just practical - in short term, some of the products might get only small updates. Changing the installer seems to be a major change, and because of small other updates to change the installer seems to be a big overhead. Our product is off-the-shelf product, which needs to run in any environment. You can imagine that retesting the installers in all combinations is a heavy burden for our test team

What is InstallAware's official position on backward compatibility? I other words, if we change IA7 to IA9, and use exactly the same scripts, should everything work or there are any known issues with upgrade?

Knowing this would of course help us with the decision to updade to IA9 completely.

Thank you, best regards
Andrej.

[MichaelNesmith]

We always strive to maintain full backwards compatibility. The project formats and commands are fully compatible with newer versions. You'll never run into issues opening old projects in newer versions. You may run into trouble doing the opposite, of course, if you make use of new version functionality.

In the event that there are changes which could be potentially breaking things with built setups, we offer compiler variables to emulate old version behavior even in new versions. These are listed in detail in the help file "upgrading from version x.y" topics. You can install the trial on a VM independently and give it a go.

Nobody can guarantee 100% seamless operation, but as a design principle we try to approach that figure as close as possible!

[andrejzr]

Thank you a lot for explanation.

Regards
Andrej.