If the installer fails for any reason it leaves the original set of files in a non functional state, including asking for another update.

[Dave Nelson]

If the installer fails for any reason the end user is left w/ a non-functional OR, including not being able to request another update.

If this is not classified as a bug then how about this for a Blueprint:

* Installer should begin by checking for a previous version of OR in the targeted directory and if found move those OR Directories and files to a temp location before attempting to install the update.
* Do the installation.
* If the installation update is successful then delete the temp directory created in step 1.
* If the update fails, delete whatever partial installation is present in the target directory and return the contents of the temp storage location back to their original location so the end user is left whole. Notify user the update failed.

[James Ross (twpol)]

Do you mean the installer (the exe downloaded from the website) or the updater (the built-in process)? The installer should not be failing in the first place, and the updater works very much like the proposed steps (it upzips to UpdateStage and puts the old files in UpdateDirty) - so I'd like to confirm which one we're talking about here. And please can you explain what the failure was, either symptoms or cause if known?

[Dave Nelson (lake-muskoka)]

I suppose it was the updater that failed. There was some generic message window that popped up: <blah><blah> failed.

The directory I use was left with no executables. I was unaware of the UpdateDirty folder and so recovery was downloading the program from the web site, installing that (older version), and requesting an update from the OR start page (as usual). IIRC one or two days passed between the abort and my manual recovery.

This event has occurred to me before, maybe 2 or 3 times, always with the same result.

[James Ross (twpol)]

Okay, sounds like the updater. It'd be handy to have the error message - if you ever see it again please keep it. :)

It looks like it'll actually clean up the UpdateDirty and UpdateStage directories even on failure, so we might be able to do some better recovery here. If it failed moving the files from the main directory to UpdateDirty, is *should* be able to move everything back (though there's no guarantee with the way some anti-virus tools work, for example).