How to manage InstallScript differential upgrades and releases.
For every version I ship, do I need to keep two releases? One for existing customers - for upgrade and one for new customers for fresh install?
Then as the product continues its life cycle, Do I need to keep all those releases so that I could create a differential upgrade?
Is that the way companies handle their releases? seems like a lot of data to keep and handle...
Installshield basically just moves over all of the files to the target machine's folder. Lets say you are going from version 1.0 to 3.0. Is there any real point in your case to upgrade to 2.0 before going to 3.0? Or could you really just lay down 3.0 directly? Unless you NEED an updater, then there's no point in having one.
How we handle it, is that we have two build like you said. A 'Fresh install' and 'Updater.' We need the updater though, because we have linear database migrations that need to run for each hotfix before the software can reach the newest version, so we can't just "skip" that 2.0
If we need to apply a hotfix, we create a stripped down version of the updater until the next release, where I create another Fresh install and Updater.
Are the savings (time or size) of differential upgrades worth this hassle? It sounds like it would be significantly easier to just release full the installer for both scenarios.
Whether or not you use them to create differential releases, I would suggest keeping all your previous releases around. You never know when you'll need to test the behavior of an old release, and the only real way to do that is with its original bits.
