I've authored an installation package (with WIX) that uses instance
transforms to allow multiple installations of the package. Although setting
up the initial package was pretty easy, I found out too late that there
seems to be very little guidance on how to *upgrade* existing instances when
a new version comes along.
Previous to dealing with multiple instances, I would've configured the
installation package to perform a 'major upgrade' and not worried about it
further. Alas, it seems that major upgrades do not play nice with multiple
instances. Because all instances share the same upgrade code (so WIX seems
to enforce), installing a new version of the package results in *all* of the
installed instances get uninstalled (rather than just the one I'm trying to
upgrade).
What scant advice I could find on the matter led me to doing the following:
For new instances, I use a command line like this:
msiexec.exe /i "Setup.msi" TRANSFORMS=:INSTANCE.10 MSINEWINSTANCE=1 *...*
When upgrading an instance to a new version, I use a command line like
this:
msiexec.exe /i "Setup.msi" /n {58cabe0e-f0f7-494c-a9e9-2fe101419b10}
REINSTALL=ALL REINSTALLMODE=vamus ...
The above seems to work perfectly *most of the time*. Occasionally, however,
certain files do not get updated as expected.
I suspect the cause might be that I am breaking some upgrade rules when
updating the installation package (that I wouldn't have had to worry about
when doing a major upgrade). One possible broken rule might be how I'm
managing the product code. As I have done with other installation packages,
I set Product Id = "*" so the base product code changes for every new
version. Of course, each instance transform specifies it's own product code,
which is static (if it's possible to make it dynamic, the WIX docs don't say
as much). Should I be manually changing the product code of each instance
every time? Or should the base product code be static also? Or ought it not
matter?
In summary, my question is how should I author the installation package and
how should I run it in order to upgrade only a single installation instance
(when there are multiple installed instances)?
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