Hi ....

I have the following requirement and I want to know if it doable or not using visual studio 2005....

I have multipleupdates of my web application and I want to makeEachupdateof this application in Single Merge Module and then use One web setup projectto installthese merge modules....

the updates will be installed on the target PC in a sequenceand if one oftheseupdates doesn't installed, the web setup project should install it andthen install next ones...

here is the example;

Suppose that I have the following Merge Modules:

1- (Update 1)

2- (Update 2)

3- (Update 3)

andI want to useOne web setup project, which is for example (MergeModulesInstaller) to install the perviousupdates on the target PC... suppose that I have PC1 where I want to install my application,, and this PC alreday has (Update 1) version,,

when I run my (MergeModulesInstaller) on PC1, I want the web setup package checks theupdates that are already installed on it and then install the new Ones... so it will detect that (Update1) already installed and then install (Update 2) and then (Update 3)

now suppose that I have new update, let's say (Update 4) and I want to use the same web setup project (MergeModulesInstaller) to install the newupdate (Update 4) on (PC1) ,,, so I need to create a new merge module (Update 4)and then add it to the (MergeModulesInstaller) web setup project,,,

when I run this setup on (PC1), the setup package will install only (Update 4)....

my Question: how can I do that using the vs2005 deplyment project??

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestion...

I think the answer is that you can't do this with VS setup projects, and you probably can't do it with any MSI-based setup. It depends what you mean by "update", but:

1. The supported Visual Studio mechanism to update an installed product is to rebuild the new version and use RemovePreviousVersions. This is effectively an uninstall of the older product and an install of the new one. There is no update - it behaves pretty much as if the user uninstalls the old one and installs the new one.

2. There are three ways of updating a product installed with MSI. One is the upgrade (in 1), another is a rebuild of the same version and reinstall via a command line reinstall of the complete MSI, the 3rd is to generate a patch, a .msp file that's basically the delta between the original version of the product and the new one. What you want to do seems to be none of these. I think you're trying to do some kind of incremental install and update as if an MSI install is just a bunch of files being copied, but it's not.

what I mean by (Update) is the following:

sometimes I need to update some Dlls under the Application Directory in the Target PC and keep the others DLLs as is...

for example:

in (Update1) I need toupdate (a1.DLL) and (a2.DLL)

in(Update2) I need to update (a1.DLL) plus updating (Page1.aspx)...

in (Update3) update(a3.DLL)... and so on..

all these files and Dlls are installed in the Target PC during afull installation for my application before (Update1)...

Thanks so much for any help...