[wix-users] Question on Minor upgrade

[Edwin Castro]

Warning: A lot of conjecture follows... Take everything I say below with a
grain of salt...

To be explicit, when I said bandwidth I didn't mean a slow connection
although that can have an effect. I meant amount of stuff to deliver in an
upgrade. When you have something the size of Windows or maybe even Office
and/or Visual Studio (that can take GB of disk space) providing only major
upgrades becomes intractable when literally only a single DLL out of
hundreds or thousands of deliverables has changed. In these cases,
versioning tends to happen at the component level instead of at the
product/application level and development teams ramp up their testing
appropriately to ensure combinations of component versions work correctly
together.

There are some applications out there that are that big and would
definitely benefit from patches but, in my limited experience, most
applications are small enough where this is not really a problem. My
current application delivers 2 executables, about 4-5 DLLs (I didn't go
count), and a couple of configuration files. Providing patches for an
application that small just doesn't make sense. The added testing and
support cost just isn't justified in this case. I expect that most
organizations requiring patches do not pay the testing cost upfront and
instead are actually forcing customers to test their component version
combinations. That's probably not a good way to do business.

--
Edwin G. Castro


On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 5:45 AM, Douglas, Keith (STATCAN) <
keith.douglas at canada.ca> wrote:

> Just another datum:
> I have users who still download updates to our applications over 56K
> modems. I've *never* found it worth it developing MSPs, even for them.
>
>
> Keith Douglas
>
> Programmer Analyst, Information Technology Operations Divison
> Statistics Canada / Government of Canada
> keith.douglas at canada.ca / 613-854-5589
>
> Programmeur Analyste, Division des opérations des technologies de
> l'information
> Statistiques Canada / Gouvernement du Canada
> keith.douglas at canada.ca / 613-854-5589
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wix-users [mailto:wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org] On Behalf
> Of Edwin Castro via wix-users
> Sent: November-16-17 6:20 PM
> To: WiX Toolset Users Mailing List <wix-users at lists.wixtoolset.org>
> Cc: Edwin Castro <egcastr at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [wix-users] Question on Minor upgrade
>
> IMHO, the biggest issue with patches in general, beyond all the technical
> difficulties, is that you're allowing untested combinations of component
> versions on the field which is completely dependent on which patches have
> been installed by customers. The more patches that are delivered to
> customers, the higher the probability that the specific version combination
> at the customer site has never been tested! On the other hand, major
> upgrades ensure a known, tested combination of component versions at
> customer sites. The demand for patches is, generally speaking, an
> antiquated solution to a bandwidth problem. Folks that demand patches
> usually do not understand why patches were a good thing to begin with.
>
> --
> Edwin G. Castro
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 16, 2017 at 1:40 PM, John Zajac via wix-users <
> wix-users at lists.wixtoolset.org> wrote:
>
> > My advice (proven by taking Christopher's advice a long time ago): ditch
> > the minor upgrade. Or at make sure you're getting value out them. IMHO,
> > they are more problematic than useful, and this issue you're encountering
> > is just one of a myriad of issues you'll likely encounter.
> >
> > Usually some internal or external customers think patches and such are
> > 'simpler', which is exactly the opposite in reality.
> >
> > And yes even for very large installs (thousands of files), a well defined
> > Major Upgrade MSI is far more flexible and reliable.
> >
> > I did get MSP patching with WiX Toolset to work great - fully automated
> > too. However it still comes with a high maintenance cost (and in my
> opinion
> > is a huge waste of money).
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 16, 2017 at 9:24 AM, Hoover, Jacob via wix-users <
> > wix-users at lists.wixtoolset.org> wrote:
> >
> > > https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/
> > > aa368364%28v=vs.85%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
> > >
> > > New components are ok but you cannot remove a component from an
> existing
> > > feature in a minor upgrade (unless you are going to restrict to 4.5+
> and
> > do
> > > extra work).
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: wix-users [mailto:wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org] On
> > Behalf
> > > Of Ven H via wix-users
> > > Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2017 1:36 AM
> > > To: WiX Toolset Users Mailing List <wix-users at lists.wixtoolset.org>
> > > Cc: Ven H <venh.123 at gmail.com>
> > > Subject: [wix-users] Question on Minor upgrade
> > >
> > > Can a new component (say a file or a registry key) installation or
> > removal
> > > of an existing component be part of Minor Upgrade?
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > > Venkatesh
> > >
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> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > -John
> >
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>
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