How to deploy upgrade of desktop application from Visual Studio 2010.

Question

I work on a desktop application and I send frequent betas to testers using deployment projects from Visual Studio 2010. I increase the minor version number each time.

My testers are annoyed because they have to uninstall the previous version before they can install the new one.

Is it possible to install a new version without uninstalling the previous? Can the new install do an upgrade of the previous?

We have a COM component in the project, which is also developed, and because of this we have found it difficult to publish the application on a web page.

We have also tried to change the product code for each new version (Visual Studio asks about this), but we have reason to believe that this mangles the install.

Answer 1

Oh, absolutely you can. The smoothest thing to do is provide a web-based updater. You'd think that'd only be useful for 'release' software, but its also useful for beta test rounds to ensure that people are up to date. If the web-update is too much right now, just create an installer that only overwrites the existing files with the new ones. Make sure your app writes its location to the registry so that the updater knows where to find it.

Answer 2

Yes. Mine works just fine. Try setting the setup project's DetectNewerInstalledVersion to False and RemovePreviousVersions to True