MajorUpgrade without changing ProductID in wix

Question

I'd like to make an install package in WIX, which will upgrade previous version of my product. I use MajorUpgrade for this purpose.

The problem is - I'd like to keep ProductId for the whole life time of my application without any changes. But MajorUpgrade requires different ProductId's for each version. Otherwise it shows an error message "Another version is already installed".

How can I perform an upgrade, keeping my ProductId?

Thanks ahead of time!

Answer 1

For major upgrades you must change ProductId. Actually I recommend to auto-generate ProductId each time installer is built by having "*" as its value. This way you will have always different value in each installer version and you will be allowed to do major upgrade. The actual value of ProductId is easy to obtain from build result.

But what you really need to keep for product lifecycle is UpgradeCode. This value you should choose once for your application and keep it.