New User question

[nbp]

I'm in the process of evaluating VisualPatch. We use Installshield to create releases here and planning to use VisualPatch to create incremental patches (which contain only the differences)

If I use VisualPatch to build incremental releases, how can I ensure that my users will install all the patches in the correct order? eg. supposed my release is at version 42.0.0. I then create 5 patches - version 42.0.1, 42.0.2....42.0.5
Suppose user 1 is at 42.0.1 and user 2 at 42.0.4.

When I create 42.0.6 , I need to let the user know that he needs to install all previous patches before he can install 42.0.6? Does VisualPatch provide some mechanism so that this process is transparent to the user? In my example above, user 1 will need patch 42.0.2 thru 42.06 but user 2 will only need patches 42.0.5 and 42.0.6?

Thanks for your help
--nbp

[Brett]

Assuming that you include all of your versions in one patch then Visual Patch will bring all users up-to-date automatically no matter what previous version they have. If you are doing a single version to single version patch, then you certainly could do that with Visual Patch 2.0 (whihc is now in beta and available for download). VP20 allows you to script any type of logic that you want into the patch whereas v1.0 was somewhat limited in this regard.

[nbp]

If I include all versions in one patch - won't the size of the patch slowly get larger? So the time to download from our website will get longer with each successive patch? We are concerned that it might reach the point where the size of the patch is almost the same as the size of the initial install. If I pay for v1.0 now, can I get a free upgrade to v2?

Does v2 check the user's installation for release/patch number and then make the necessary updates?

--nbp

[Brett]

Originally Posted by nbp

If I include all versions in one patch - won't the size of the patch slowly get larger? So the time to download from our website will get longer with each successive patch?

We are concerned that it might reach the point where the size of the patch is almost the same as the size of the initial install.

Yes. Than can happen. In some cases it might be better to make one patch that goes from the previos release to the latest (just one sub-release) and another that does the full history. Then let your update program (if you use something like TrueUpdate) decide which one to download. There can definitely be some strategy involved.

Originally Posted by nbp

If I pay for v1.0 now, can I get a free upgrade to v2?

Yes. Click here.

Originally Posted by nbp

Does v2 check the user's installation for release/patch number and then make the necessary updates?

Yes, v2.0 can detect the installed version in any way that you want. It is much more flexible and powerful than v1.0. Go ahead and download the beta version and try it out.

[nbp]

Will v2 be able to detect the release number even if the install was created with InstallShield? Or do we need to buy Setup factory too?

--nbp

[Brett]

How you detect release number is really up to you. You can read file version information, read from the Registry or an INI file, or any other method that works for you. Visual Patch should be able to work with any installer program.

One interesting benefit of using SUF70 is that it is quite easy to add information from the patch into the uninstall xml file. For instance, I made a patch with VP20 here that writes out any new files that are created, backup files, etc. into the product's uninstall file. Then when the uninstall is run it removes all of the newly-added files from the patch.