[wix-users] How to allow version downgrade

[Christopher Painter]

Here is years of experience with downgrades for me.


1) Schedule RemoveExistingProducts early

2) Limit your footprint to INSTALLLOCATION

3) Use REINSTALLMODE AMUS


Do this and it works really well.   Install 1   Install 2  Install 3  oops rollback install 2.   Super easy.  Especially using a tools such as SCCM because you don't have to do a two step of uninstall 3 and uninstall 2 which requires additional testing to confirm your back out plan is valid.



The biggest problem?   Operations people who screw stuff up and deploy older versions when they shouldn't have.  Because the backout (downgrade) is so bullet proof  it just works and now people are upset they are on the wrong version.  Not really an installer problem but this is something I've experienced in production over the years.



________________________________
From: wix-users <wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> on behalf of Rob Mensching via wix-users <wix-users at lists.wixtoolset.org>
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2019 7:21 AM
To: WiX Toolset Users Mailing List
Cc: Rob Mensching
Subject: Re: [wix-users] How to allow version downgrade

FYI. My experience with downgrades is that lots of unexpected things don't work well. I know that isn't terribly helpful but be prepared to look for really screwy behaviors.

_____________________________________________________________
 Short replies here. Complete answers over there: http://www.firegiant.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: wix-users <wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> On Behalf Of Edwin Castro via wix-users
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2019 12:30 AM
To: WiX Toolset Users Mailing List <wix-users at lists.wixtoolset.org>
Cc: Edwin Castro <egcastr at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [wix-users] How to allow version downgrade

The MajorUpgrade element is for your msi while the error log is for your bootstrapper. Perhaps you need to tell the bootstrapper application that your msi could downgrade a higher version or your chosen bootstrapper application does not support msi downgrades.

I personally do not allow downgrades so I don't have real experience to share. But I wonder if you need to change the Schedule attribute. I think afterInstallExecute will not allow downgrades because your new files would be lower version than the current files and would not be replaced. Make sure to check the versions of your files post downgrade to ensure you're actually getting what you want.

--
Edwin G. Castro



On Thu, Jan 17, 2019, 23:20 Swatantra Yadav via wix-users < wix-users at lists.wixtoolset.org wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> I am trying to build an installer that would allow both upgrade to
> higher version as well downgrade to older version.
>
> So I added the below to wxs file:
> <MajorUpgrade AllowDowngrades="yes" IgnoreRemoveFailure="yes"
> MigrateFeatures="yes" Schedule="afterInstallExecute" />
>
> While upgrade works perfectly fine, the downgrade from new version to
> old version is failing. I get the below error in error.log:
>
> [475C:00D4][2019-01-17T23:02:25]e000: Error 0x80070666: Cannot install
> a product when a newer version is installed.
>
> In the new installer I have added an additional new component and have
> new condition for higher .Net framework version. Those are the only
> two changes from the old installer.
>
> How can I make this downgrade work?
>
> Thanks
> Swat
>
> ____________________________________________________________________
> WiX Toolset Users Mailing List provided by FireGiant
> http://www.firegiant.com/
>

____________________________________________________________________
WiX Toolset Users Mailing List provided by FireGiant http://www.firegiant.com/

____________________________________________________________________
WiX Toolset Users Mailing List provided by FireGiant http://www.firegiant.com/