How to update specific files via msi installation.

Question

I want to make a installation which can be both new installation and update installation. When it was used as an update installation, I want some files to be updated regardless the version and modified datetime. And some files would never be updated.

What I tried: Set the "REINSTALLMODE" to "amus". And set the "Never overwrite" property of never updated files' components to be "Yes".

What I get: It doesn't work. Those components with "Never overwrite = yes" are still updated somehow.

My question: Is this right? REINSTALLMODE has the higher priority than component's "Never overwrite" property? How to deal with this partial updates issue?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

MSI has specific File replacement logic.

I would look into doing a Major upgrade.

Assuming these are unversioned files (for example text/xml config files, not assemblies) I would manually set the File Version on any file I wanted to always be updated (the manually set version will override what is already installed), and leave alone the others which the file replacement logic should ignore.

Here is a doc about REINSTALLMODE=amus which mentions the 'a' means ignore file versioning rules and update everything. not what you want. Also, I believe REINSTALLMODE is generally for 'repair' operations, not install/upgrade anyways.

Answer 2

We do something like this...

1. Install files to program files
2. Install default configuration to all users appdata
3. Copy default config to per-user appdata if per-user config not found.

What this means is that if an update is applied, the default configuration is reset but the per-user configuration is not. All settings, etc are saved and not overwritten during the MSI update.

Depending on what files you're trying to "not update" I suspect you can probably do something along similar lines.