Working with Upgrades, Patches, and QuickPatch Projects

InstallShield 2024

Project: This information applies to the following project types:

Basic MSI
InstallScript MSI
MSI Database
Transform

Note that MSI Database and Transform projects have support for major upgrades, but not for minor upgrades, small updates, patches, or QuickPack packages.

If you are going to package your upgrade as a full installation or as a standard patch, you begin by opening the latest version of your project and making the necessary changes, such as adding files and registry entries, as needed.

If you would like to package your upgrade as a QuickPatch, you begin by creating a new project—a QuickPatch project. With a QuickPatch project, you identify which earlier releases should be patched by your QuickPatch.

Refer to the topics in this section to learn how to create major upgrades, minor upgrades, small updates, automatic upgrades, patches, and QuickPatch projects. This section also explains how you can validate your upgrade or patch to determine whether your resulting package will perform its actions correctly.

This section includes the following topics:

Understanding File Overwrite Rules
Upgrade Considerations
Configuring InstallShield to Automatically Determine the Upgrade Type
Creating Major Upgrades
Creating Minor Upgrades
Creating Small Updates
Patching Considerations
Creating and Applying Patches
Creating a QuickPatch Project
Validating Upgrades, Patches, and QuickPatch Packages
Patching Assemblies in the Global Assembly Cache
Working with Differential and Full Releases

See Also