I have a Setup Project and now i'm at the point where i wonder how can I provide a notification and an automatic update to the users of my programm. (ClickOnce is not an opportunity) The Solution contains several projects and a custom action to create the MSSQL Database.
Solution
project1
project2
etc.
Setup Project
it looks like that.
So my questions are:
-How can I notify the users that there is an update available? Is there a possibilities to integrate something like that in the setup or the main project? I've readed something about to combine the Setup Project and Click Once Apps. (forgotten the link...)
-How can I provide an update which only newer files are installed and not the whole PreviousVersion has to be uninstalled?
-Also my application uses a MSSQL Database how can I provide a Database update?
How can I notify the users that there is an update available?
You need an Updater application which checks for updates and prompts the user to install them. Visual Studio doesn't have this, but some commercial setup authoring tools have built-in updaters. If you don't want to use a third-party updater, you can write one yourself.
How can I provide an update which only newer files are installed and not the whole PreviousVersion has to be uninstalled?
This is done through patches: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa370578(VS.85).aspx
Also my application uses a MSSQL Database how can I provide a Database update?
Since your database is handled by custom actions, its update can also be performed through custom actions.
Related
I need some help regarding Install4J and the auto online update function.
We have a JRE bundled Install4J installer which works fine. We use the auto online update functionality which works fine, too. All this functionality in integrated to a continuous integration process in TeamCity.
Unfortunately the update installation setup file has a size of around 100MB which is inconvenient to download if we only want to apply a patch or a minor update.
As far as I have understood from other similar questions and the Install4J documentation the right way to deal with that is using a second project file with another application ID and setting up an Add-On-Installer which only contains relevant files and points to the full installer application ID.
To enable the auto online update functionality I have to upload the update.xml file from the Add-On installer, am I right?
By the way, does the Add-on online auto update procedure automatically detect the locally installed version correctly?
But in that case we have to adapt the add-on installer each and every time we are deploying a new patch or minor feature which is difficult to implement in the CI process.
Is there a way to configure an Install4J installer so that it automatically gets the information online which elements have to be updated so that the download size is as small as possible and we could just use one default add-on installer which contains all sources beside the JRE bundle?
Something like an online incremental update procedure which is managed internally by Install4J?
Thank you.
You should never use the add-on installer for updating, because it cannot change the version number.
In order to get smaller update installers, you create a second project where the distribution tree only contains the changed files - or at least does not contain some large files that did not change. To do that, you simply copy the original installer and delete the files in the distribution tree that you do not need to update.
Then you build two sets of installers, those for a new installation and those for the update.
Over the years our InstallShield code has grown un-manageable and messy. We're about to design an InstallShield 2015 installation from scratch for a new major release, and I was wondering if there's any way to automatically capture a set of system changes to use as a cleaner starting point for developing a new install package. Ideally, I would like to turn on some capturing software, install the oldest release from which we support an upgrade, install the latest service packs, and then apply the manual changes that will get the new release running on the system. Then I would turn off the capturing software, and it would provide an InstallShield project pre-loaded with all the files and registry entries (GAC changes, .NET assemblies, etc) that were created as part of that install. Then I could add steps to delete those that we no longer needed and do some other clean-up and refinements. Does such a thing exist?
Yes, this is called a repackager most often, in the enterprise world where sys admin and packagers prepare applications for deployment on the company machines.
Flexera has one that can create a project for InstallShield, but it is sold together with their AdminStudio solution, which is not cheap.
We (at Caphyon) have a repackager included in Advanced Installer (the architect edition) which also requires you purchase license. And of course the generated project will be compatible only with Advanced Installer, where you can configure your installers as you wish.
I think there is also a free repackager, AppDeploy from Dell, but I never used it, so I don't know how accurate it is and if you can use the results created into InstallShield or if it generates directly an MSI.
If you started looking more careful you will probably find other repackager tools, but you should know that building such a tool is not an easy task so choose carefully. Also probably only the one from AdminStudio will be able to generate a project that can be read by InstallShield.
If you already have the source projects from the older editions I would personally not try using a repackager. Instead I would go for cleaning up all the configurations which you do not understand and re-build them from scratch.
A repackager as good as it can be still has some problems. It can capture incomplete data, for example if you have a custom action that runs different code based on the OS where the installer is running the repackager will capture only its effects on the OS where you run it. On another one might run differently and have another output.
Also if your installer has prerequisites and you run the repackager on a machine where those prerequisites are installed then the repackager will not capture anything related to this, so by accident you can forget to include required prerequisites in the new package.
There is also the things like meta-information which few repackagers can detect. For example files associations which are actually a set of file and registry entries connected together or environment variables, scheduled tasks, etc...
Most repackagers capture all this data and simply show it to you as configuration files and registry entries, instead of creating the correct entities in your projects, i.e. files associations, environment variables or scheduled tasks in their correspondent views.
I would like to create a new installation of TFS 2013 on a new server.
I made my research and learnt that the migration process as it is described on this link below carries some risks:
TFS Migration Manual:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404869.aspx
Risks:
http://blogs.msmvps.com/p3net/2014/04/12/tfs-upgrade-nightmares/
I have a plan to avoid using the TFS Migration manual above, instead; I would instead check all of my projects out (about 20) and then re-create them on the new TFS and check them in again.
However, we have work-items, users, workspaces and other agile information which I have created for my projects, and which I still require to be on the new installation.
I was wondering whether the following works (again without risks and hassle, as time is scarce):
Back up the TFS Databases from the old installation, and restore them into the new installation or simply import the data from old to new using SQL Server's Data Import Tool.
I am particularly referring to these databases, which TFS has:
Tfs_Configuration; Tfs_DefaultCollection; Tfs_Warehouse.
I found these databases on the SQL Server instance which TFS uses.
Also, this approach works easier without having to obstruct the team, as the Data Base Resotation can occur after hours..
Now, will this plan work?
No, your plan will not work and will leave your TFS in an unsupported state.
You need to follow a combination of the Upgrade and "changing environment" workflow.
1) Restore all TFS databases (tfs_*) to tye new environment
2) Install TFS 2015
3) Configure and select Upgrade Wizard - when running make sure you have all the new server names
4) (optional) ChangeServerID - if this is a practice run you should then immediately:
4.1) I unconfigure the application tier with "tfsconfig exe setup /uninstall:all"
4.2) run the ChangeServerID command
4.3) reconfigure tfs and run the "app tier only" wizard
Simples....
Note: You need to change the server ID if this is a test/practice instance as each server gets a unique ID. When clients first connect to the new server they will "upgrade/migrate" the users data across. You don't want that happening for a trial...so change the ID...
WARNING: If you manipulate the data in the TFS server in any way that is not done by the TFS Product Team tools you will turn your instance to crap. Do not ever edit, or cause to edit, the data in the operational store.
i made an application in VS 2010 that ran on MYSQL, the client would download this program and it would create its own MYSQL database. Now that i'm using VS 2013 i can't seem to get this to work again. Unless i included all these Dll files: Microsoft tutorial
so my 3 questions are:
is it no longer supported?
is there a better local database type i could use instead, that doesn't require extra dll's?
will i have to send these dll's every time i update my application now?
MySql was never supported natively by the .net framework, you must install the mysql conector to get full access to mysql or you can use odbc but that's gonna be really slow.
If you want a compacto local db, then sqlite is much better for that Job.
And to send those dll's, it depends on how you do your update, if you have a system which remplaces your exe and leaves in place previous files, then it will work, but if you plan to use an installer, then the installer will have them.
is it no longer supported?
It is supported I am using it in my project.
is there a better local database type i could use instead, that doesn't require extra dll's?
MSSQL if you want.(I am not sure about others)
will i have to send these dll's every time i update my application now?
No, you need to deploy only once unless you are panning to change MySQL connector. You only need to ship the "MySql.Data.dll" along with your project
Some background to my problem...
We are currently using ClickOnce to deploy part of our solution which was working a treat until we encountered a scenario where we are now required to have multiple instances of our application installed on the same PC. We are able to achieve this internally and have this working perfectly as we know what instances we have so our build process will update AssemblyName to include the instance name before publishing the installer, this means we are able to have multiple instances on our PCs internally (ie, test, live and demo etc).
Our external deployment process is slightly different, we take one of the ClickOnce installers created in our build (along with all our other components that make up our application) and as the ClickOnce installer is deployed on a server we update the app.config along with the manifest files and resign so they now have client specific details. If a client chooses to have multiple instances of our product installed the ClickOnce will now fail when a second instance is installed on a desktop PC as all instances share the same assemble name.
So finally to the question, does anyone know of a way to update the manifest etc after the clickonce package has been created to allow multiple instances to be installed? We could go down the route of building many clickOnce installers but I dont think this will really work for us, is there perhaps an alternative to ClickOnce which provides a similar upgrade experience for non-admin users?
Hopefully someone will be able to share their experiences and help me resolve this.
Thanks in advance
Doug
I don't know of another technology that allows such a simple auto update process. So sticking with ClickOnce... I think this link might be useful. It explains what you need to do to have the same app installed twice. Essentially changing the assembly name and product name should do it.
Hope that helps.
Greg