Question

I’d like to release some updates for a WinForm program, but to date I have simply released an all-new compile. People have to un-install the old version and install the new version.

EDIT: I’m using an auto-generated InstalWizard. It preserves my file strucutre and places the [PrimaryProgramOutput] in a particular directory. I forget what this is called.

I bet there’s a way to get around this, but I don’t know what it’s called. As you may guess, searches for “updates” “new version” “install” and the other obvious things I’ve tried have generated an impressive number of irrelevant results. >_<

I suspect this process has a particular name, which should point me in the right direction, but if it doesn’t please link to a tutorial or something.

Answer 1

I see from the tags you are using C#. Visual Studio can create Setup projects for these kind of tasks. The setup projects als contain a property RemovePreviousVersion, which will remove a previous version if the versioning of your setup is correct and the GUID of the application stays the same.

See this link for more information:
http://www.simple-talk.com/dotnet/visual-studio/updates-to-setup-projects/