A simpler way to add Windows Installer major upgrade functionality to your MSI in WiX v3.5

Bob Arnson has been working on some simplifications to the WiX language in WiX v3.5, and he has posted some introductory information about a couple of these changes on his blog.  I wanted to link to them here to hopefully help raise visibility for these simplifications:

I have found the major upgrade simplifications to be particularly useful.  A while back, I wrote a step-by-step guide for authoring, building and testing major upgrades using WiX, and that guide later got added to the WiX documentation.

As you can see in Bob’s blog post and in the WiX MajorUpgrade element documentation, Bob’s simplifications will allow WiX v3.5 to handle creating the Upgrade table elements, scheduling the RemoveExistingProducts action, and optionally blocking downgrades if a user tries to install an older version of the MSI after installing a newer version.  You only need to make sure that you include UpgradeCode and Version attributes in your Product element, and then you can use the new MajorUpgrade element in your WiX v3.5 authoring.

If you choose to, you can continue to use the more verbose syntax described in my previous blog post or the WiX documentation for authoring a major upgrade, but you could instead convert to the new MajorUpgrade element in order to more clearly express the behavior you intend for your MSI and to simplify your setup authoring.

The major upgrade and component authoring functionality described in the above blog posts is available in WiX v3.5 builds starting with the v3.5.1315.0 build on SourceForge, and I encourage you to check them out.