Is it possible to have Universal Patch??

[padmavathi]

HI,

I am creating a patch for my product. My product have more than 500 versions. I need to create a patch to upgrade my product from all older version the latest version. I know that it is not possible to have 500 source versions tabs in Visual Patch. My question is, is it possible to have a patch which can upgrade only by checking the installed product name instead of checking the installed version.

My ultimate aim is to create a patch, which should upgrade all my older installed versions to the target specified version irrespective of what version is installed.

Please anyone reply...

Regards,
Padma

[Lorne]

Technically yes, that is possible. Since the version detection in Visual Patch is scripted, you can modify it in any way -- even removing it entirely if you want.

You might need to set the "Force install" option for all of your files, so they all get included in the patch and installed in all cases.

What you're describing is essentially a software installer, however.

• Without previous versions to diff against, it won't benefit from binary differencing.
• Without a set of valid files to look for, it won't offer any protection against unauthorized use.

My recommendation would be to build a normal patch for the last few versions, and then use your original installer (or its equivalent made with Visual Patch if you prefer) for anyone who waits too long to upgrade.

Just because you've released 500 versions of a file so far doesn't mean you have 500 versions of it in the wild. At any given time, most users will have one of the recent versions. (Especially if your software includes auto-update functionality, e.g. TrueUpdate.)

So instead of trying to define 500 versions in a single Visual Patch project, just define the most recent 3 or 5 or 10 or whatever you feel is reasonable. Whenever you put out a new version, add it to the project and remove the oldest one.

[padmavathi]

Thanks a lot!!!

[padmavathi]

Hi,

Its mentioned in VisualPatch documentation that, there are 3 ways of strategies(incremental patching, multiversion patching, and full-history patching.).

I understand, incremental patching means, 1-1 updation. multiversion patching means updating many installed versions to a single target version.

Is there any option to set these types in VisualPatch GUI.

Can anyone give me the details and steps of creating full-history patch.

Cheers...

[Lorne]

Originally Posted by padmavathi

Hi,

Its mentioned in VisualPatch documentation that, there are 3 ways of strategies(incremental patching, multiversion patching, and full-history patching.).

I understand, incremental patching means, 1-1 updation. multiversion patching means updating many installed versions to a single target version.

Yep. And full-history just means updating all possible versions to a single target version.

Is there any option to set these types in VisualPatch GUI.

They aren't like switches you turn on or off; those three terms just describe the kind of projects you can set up. They are determined by how many versions you add to your project (and include in the build).

Can anyone give me the details and steps of creating full-history patch.

Add every version you've ever released to the project. That's it.

If you have 500 versions, you probably don't want to bother building that kind of full-history patch. Luckily you probably don't need one -- the chances of all 500 versions still being out there is probably pretty small?

If you really want to build a patch that will upgrade all versions regardless of what's actually installed (so, perhaps even if nothing is installed), you can do that do by modifying the detection script. How you do that depends on what you're updating, what you want to accomplish, etc.