On our infrastructure containing some 200 Windows 10 clients, software installation is mostly carried out via old-school active directory software install group policies (no SCCM or later technologies used). Our servers are Windows Server 2019 boxes.
There was an older article here Upgrade software package installed with GPO which discussed "proper" ways to do upgrades; For the last 15 years I've followed the 2nd way. That is (quoted from the thread):
- use Group Policy Editor to create a new package in Computer Configuration/Software Settings/Software Installation for the new version and specify which older package should be upgraded by this one (on Upgrade tab select package for version a; options to uninstall existing or do an upgrade)
I've got a pretty old Adobe Reader 2017 32-bit GPO-based installation which has gone EOL this June, so I'm looking into a clean way to upgrade my clients to Reader DC 64-bit. Notice that this is a two-fold change: of product (2017 -> DC) and of architecture (32-bit -> 64-bit). So I'm not sure if I can follow the same course due to the two differences mentioned above.
In another scenario I have to update our LibreOffice installations. Also GPO-based, our existing policy contains some 7 packages that have amassed over the last 8 years or so. It's too many to keep using them. In this case I'd like to have the older packages removed to keep the GPO as simple as possible and also give me the opportunity to delete these old packages from the fileserver; there would be no need to keep them around.
In the same thread, an approach that does what I want to was described:
- use Group Policy Editor to remove a package for version a (with immediately uninstall option) and add a new package for version b
In this approach it is supposed that a single package already exists (and that is the one that gets deleted).
My question is: how would one go in case there are more than on package versions in the same GPO (as is the case in my LibreOffice installation and in any other that I have)? Should I edit my GPO, and from Computer Configuration/Software Settings/Software Installation successively remove the existing packages (with immediately uninstall option), starting with the newest and proceeding until there is none left, before inserting the very latest software? Or do something else?
