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Aug 17th, 2009
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Surprise! an update with new libraries - and your app can't run.

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Dear forum,

About two weeks ago Microsoft released a KB update for developers, updating the runtime assemblies (from 8.0.50727.762 to 8.0.50727.4053).
That caused everything we built in the last few days to require the new libraries, failing run if they did not exist.
This caused a mess and confusion, since without any notice - our QA (not receiving the automatic update) and developers who did not yet receive the update - could not run our products.

Only after some frantic investigation the problem was diagnosed and corrected by supplying all non-developers the new redistribution package containing the new revisions of the runtime assemblies.

Now, putting frustration aside, I really would like to know what you think is the "by the book" way of notifying about such cases. Since most of our developers receive 'silent' automatic updates, there was absolutely no way of guessing what was about to happen. Even our deployment engineer didn't receive the appropriate InstallShield redistributables.

Please advise!

Thanks,
Gil Moses
Waves Audio Ltd.
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Re: Surprise! an update with new libraries - and your app can't run.

The "by the book" method is to set policies that do not allow developers to receive "silent automatic updates" unless they have been centrally orchestrated by your QA.

Your QA or someone would have a development lab isolated from your real development environment. They would test an update against a number of factors including regression tests that previous stuff works. Then, when satisfied, a Change Request is made, logging what has to be done, specifying how to roll back if it all goes to Ludwig and then a centrally orchestrated update is made to the pre-warned user PCs.

Will you be doing that in future?
Last edited by Suspishio; Aug 17th, 2009 at 8:48 pm. Reason: typo
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Re: Surprise! an update with new libraries - and your app can't run.

For that to happen as you suggest, there should be a test-build of my product against every Microsoft update, given to QA for verification. Only after that should updates be accepted by sysadmin and distributed to everyone in the organization.

Although theoretically this looks like a safe method, it feels rather tedious...
In real life, product breakage will occur only once in a long while, and for that I'd suggest that Microsoft send a special notice to developers informing them that new assemblies will be required on the end-user machines.

What do you think?

Gil.
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Re: Surprise! an update with new libraries - and your app can't run.

Tedious is safe.

Product breakage to the extent you've described in your fisrt post needs to be avoided.

Microsoft will do Jack Sh*t to assist your predicament!
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