I have been using Installshield 9 and 12 for 5+ years, but I have never utilized the upgrade functionality before. What we have done is to write a new installer, install to a new directory to allow different major versions to run side-by-side on machines (mainly for our support department).
Now I need to write a minor update in IS 12 and after scouring the web and the help files, I still do not know where to begin. If there is a good resource that will get me going, please share that with me.
Here is what I need to accomplish:
- write an MSI which is shipped as a setup.exe which can upgrade my current 2.5 users to 2.6 or perform a full install for new users to version 2.6
- the 2.6 version will have newer versions of many files as well as new additional files
Here are the questions rattling around in my head:
1) Do I author my upgrade in the same Installshield project? I am thinking yes by adding a minor upgrade on the media:upgrades panel.
2) Do I just add new files to existing components for the new files and then point the component to the newest versions of the files that existed from the 2.5 version?
3) I named my installshield project "PRODUCTNAME 2.5" so this is what shows up in the control panels and this is the name of the MSI. I have read that with minor updates, you cannot change the name of the MSI which is OK since the MSI is shipped wrapped up inside of the setup.exe. I gather that my project name should have been simply "PRODUCTNAME" instead of what I chose. Should I consider going the route of a silent uninstall/reinstall for the upgrade users so that I can correct this productname issue?
Thank you in advance for any and all input that you can help me out with.
