Developing For .NET

Like a lot of other developers, I use the Setup & Deployment Projects in Visual Studio 2005 to create MSI files for software installs. Typically, this is a Windows Forms based application. For our in house users, especially those testing new software, there could be many iterations of a piece of software. Of course, this means installing the updated version every time I make a correction or add a new feature. Unfortunately, this has also always meant uninstalling the previous version using the trusty old “Add/Remove Programs” option in the Control Panel. Needless to say, this tends to grate on the users nerves after the first 20 reinstalls.

So, you might be wondering why I did not simply use the RemovePreviousVersions Property of the Deployment Project. The problem was that it never worked. I would set that property to TRUE and still the installer would not proceed until the previous version was uninstalled. While I found this truly annoying, it was never a big enough deal to spend a lot of time trying to figure out why the property was not working as expected… until now…

Have you ever ignored a problem until one day you just say “darn it – I’m going to figure this out no matter what it takes!”? Well, for whatever reason that was my attitude this morning. And fortunately for me, it didn’t take too long to figure out. The key is in the property name itself: RemovePreviousVersions. It is the Version part that somehow managed to elude me all this time, and therein lies the secret: I was never changing the version number. I had always focused on the Previous part before, assuming some kind of temporal meaning, incorrectly assuming that Previous meant Prior. Sometimes, our own brains just get in the way.

Of course, once I read it properly, the solution presented itself: I needed to change the Version number. I think part of my mental block here is that Versioning never occurred to me. If I remember correctly, in Visual Studio 2003, you specified a wild card and versioning happened automatically. That doesn’t appear to be the case now: I’m not saying it isn’t, but I am saying that I’m not going to take the time to investigate it. What I am going to do, from now on, is increment the Version property of the Deployment Project whenever I am preparing to deploy the Installer.

I’m going to chalk this one up as a Homer Simpson “DOH!” [slaps forehead], but hey, we all have them! Maybe this one can help someone else get over the same hurdle.