Dev 8 vs Dev 7 questions

[smcburney]

Any and all opinions welcome....:)

#1 - is the upgrade from Dev 7 to Dev 8 worth it? Are there enough new features or bug fixes to make it worth it?

#2 - it sounds like building upgrades is easier? is this true?

#3 - if I have a standard project, and do a major upgrade, can it determine what features were previously installed? This is something that I believe doesn't work in dev 7.

Other thoughts?

[akarnik]

Hi Scott,

I would highly recommend that you evaluate dev8 thoroughly....test all the tings that you want to do, with it, before upgrading.

There are numerous problems in developer 8...not that dev7 doesnt have problems. I am evaluating dev8 for its patching and upgrade capability currently. In the course of 2 weeks, i must have opened atleast 10 support calls with their hotline. Most of them have no solution, or the solution is to use Standard Projects and write a whole lot of code. That is exactly what i want to avoid, because i'm paying Installshield the money to write the code for me....but their solution of a basic msi project just doesnt cut it.

i tried the quickpatch capabilities, and everytime i try to install the patch, it hangs. once it hangs, you are hosed. You have to reboot your machine, use the windows installer cleanup tool from Microsoft, to remove your full installation entries from the installer database, reinstall your main project and then try creating a new quickpath project, which will always hang.

i got it to work only once, and even then it ran through all the standard actions that my main project is supposed to run. i was told to add the "Not Patch" condition to all of those...which is fine, if i really understand what each action does anyways. I did manage to add the condition and it still insists on running those. My patch test was a simple test where i just wanted to update one text file... and developer 8 cannot do that.

they have a patch creation wizard, which i cant figure out how to make it work.

i think InstallShield have a long way before they figure out how to wrap Windows Installer...i just wish i had stuck with installshield professional instead of using the developer line.
-amol

[smcburney]

thanks for the feedback!

I'll probably end up ordering Dev 8, but not using it for a while.

We used to use Professional 6.3 here, but with our latest project, we need the Install Feature on Demand functionality of the windows installer. Unless InstallShield Professional gets that capability, I'm stuck using Developer.

[TomClement]

akarnik, could you post the problems you had with Dev 8 and workarounds for them. I'm sure they will be helpful to others.

[akarnik]

ok will do, in a separate thread....however the workarounds arent really acceptable or even feasible....

-amol

[TomClement]

I appreciate it, and understand about the workarounds. But at least if we encounter the problems we'll know they're real etc.

Thanks again.

[David Thornley]

I have not seen any of your support threads, so I am not sure what you have tried thus far.

Please let me know what problems you have been having and I will work with you to fix them. Patches and upgrades need to work, and if they are not working in your specific case, we need to learn from your scenario and improve our product to meet your needs. My e-mail is davidt@installshield.com if you want to have this discussion offline.

I have never seen a patch hang , let alone a quickpatch. If you generate a log file for the patch, it shoudl tell you which action is causing the hang which would help greatly in debugging.

If the hang was coming from a custom action and that is why you mention modifyign the action condition, then QuickPatch is not the solution for you, you will want to use the Patch Design view wihch easily supports making those types of modifications.