Appropriate Handling of Software Upgrades

[e05wz]

Right now when a software is upgraded, UT does not seem to be capable of transfering the installation history of the old version to the new version, even if "Append traced data" is used during the upgrade. After an upgrade, the old version disappears in the app list (despite that the .xml trace file is being kept) while the new version shows up with no tracking data attached. And it would no longer be possible to do a clean uninstall based on the old trace data. It would be nice that the updated trace file (with old history + appended data during the upgrade) can be directly linked to the new version for uninstallation.

The only workaround for now seems to be a manual uninstall + reinstall for every upgrade, which is pretty inconvenient as well as problematic for software that reuses the old version's configurations, which can be lost in the uninstall + reinstall process.

[kleuter]

"The only workaround for now seems to be a manual uninstall + reinstall for every upgrade, which is pretty inconvenient."

I can't actually think of any other workaround.

[e05wz]

I can't actually think of any other workaround.

I edited the original post with more explanation of the problems of the workaround. I'm not sure whether you saw it or not.

Is it not possible to do what I explained in the first paragraph? Users could use "append traced data" to track the upgrade and merge the changes during the upgrade with the old history. Once the whole process it done, UT should check if the old installation still exists. If the old installation is missing and a new installation is detected during the process, the following options can be offered to users: (1) link the history to the new installation; (2) keep the history as a separate item in the app list; (3) dismiss the history. These options would likely be able to deal most of the use scenarios.