[ruby-talk:12057] Re: Windows Installer questions

>On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, Andrew Hunt wrote:
>
>> 
>> I've been busily putting together a new version of the Windows [Installer]
>> 
>> I could write code specifically for an upgrade that would
>> automatically run the uninstall of the old, preserve the site_ruby
>> additions, and create world peace, but before I embarked on that
>> journey I thought I'd check with ya'll to see what the expectations
>> were.  This is the first thing I've ever done with InstallShield, so I 
>> there might also be an easier way to do it that I'm not aware of.
>> 
>> What sayest the crowd?
>> 
>> /\ndy
>> 

Hello there,

	I guess I'm part of the crowd.  From my experience of working with Windows
and upgrading software the suggestions you are putting forth sound quite
nice to me.  I guess one of the things that's sorta nice (and brainless)
everytime I see the Windows installer pop up is that if I have a previous
version of software loaded that will have incompatibilities with the older
one I'd prefer the installer be smart enough to notice this, notify the
user that it found an older version of the s/w and that it would like to
remove the old.  If the user selects yes it goes ahead and de-installs the
older version then proceeds to put the brand new shiny version on the
system then delete some necessary .dll and then cause world havoc on my PC
:-).

	In all seriousness I prefer this method over having it install a different
version that I have to later track down and get rid of manually (along with
the older one).   This might work for major and minor version changes but
for patch versions I'd prefer to avoid this if possible unless I really
needed all these various versions lying around for compatibility and
back-rev testing.  But I imagine this would be more important for major
revisions and minor revisions than patch levels.
	The other method I've seen is that the Installer detects an older version
of s/w, notifies the user, tells them to delete the older version, then
dumps them out of the install program so the user has to go and manually
uninstall the old s/w then go back to the installer and reinstall.  I guess
the convenience factor has always been one of the nice things I've liked
about the Windows installers.

But that's just my two cents,
Alain Hoang
Waiting for the new install to bring World Peace :-)