Uwe Stöhr wrote: > Am 30.03.2014 12:09, schrieb Georg Baum: > >>> The reason is that for beta releases we cannot guarantee that they are >>> stable enough. If you would install a never LyX test version over a beta >>> it might be that you will still see bugs that we already fixed in LyX. >> >> Why? > > See my post in the thread about the "cannot installer same version over > itself" thread: The installer for the betas were not adopted (I just used > the installer for LyX 2.0.6) and I don't have the time to check for every > test build if a former beta did not e.g. shad a bug in configure.py > leading to mangled preferences. Beta releases are test builds only for LyX > and I don't think I need to support them the same way as for stable > releases. I now got feedback that installing RC1 over beta2 is possible, > it is nevertheless more save to uninstall the betas first.
I am surprised to learn that the installer needs to know details about previous versions for uninstallation. IMHO this updating is unneeded work that you should not need to do, and I can understand that you do not want to do that more than absolutely needed. However I do not agree that beta installers do not need to be able to uninstall previous versions, or that the final installer does not need to be able to uninstall the beta. If this does not work then the installer will not be tested completely. For the future I suggest to implement an automatism for uninstallation which never needs to be changed again. This could be done e.g. by writing all installed versions to a registry folder (which can be enumerated), and by calling the uninstallation routine of the already installed version from the new installer. The new installer then would need to enumerate all installed versions and decide which one can coexist (other major oer minor version), and which one needs to be uninstalled (same major and minor versions, same or different patch version). Georg
