This may be a bit of a strange question, but I'm not sure if what I'm asking is actually even valid or not.. So let's start with a different question: Do any of you create setup packages for release candidate software builds?
To clarify: Where I work, nobody from Software trusts anybody from Support to properly deploy our (horribly complicated) Java apps for testing, so we hold their hands with a glove we call "Advanced Installer", before using the same tool to build full release setup packages for distribution.
So, if any of you do something like this with AI, what do you do about the "product version" property? With the restrictions imposed on this property, there's obviously no way to get a version in between "1.2.3" and "1.2.4"; no letters, no extra version segments, just that. Previously I had considered using a separate AI project for this, but I still want a setup that's able to replace an existing, older installation of the system; though I'm not sure if anything like this is even possible anyway.
If it turns out that AI isn't the best system to use for this purpose, I may simply place all required files in a self-extracting archive and simply name the file as "My App Suite 1.2.3-RC1 Setup".. This way, I can replace the relevant files as they were installed by one of the proper setup packages, without changing the version identifier in the Windows registry, so any subsequent setup package builds will believe they're upgrading from an earlier version. Naturally, this idea itself comes with it's own set of concerns (mismatching file list compared to the last setup package that deployed them), so I would prefer to keep it in the family and use AI for this.
Very keen to hear some thoughts and ideas on how you guys handle this process..