In order to better update products without having to deploy to all users or devices and have it automatically install the product, using a script wrapper could offer the ability to try and detect if the application is already installed and not updated and only install the update if the application is currently installed and out of date. In the current method, if an application is deployed to a collection it will install the application (or update it) no matter what. Using a wrapper would mean that even if a device within a collection does not have the application, it won't automatically install the application, but will only install the update if it is currently installed already. This may require a change in the how applications are created as it may need to have two applications, one for install and one for update, but use the same source files, still minimizing the disk space used to store the binaries. With this adjustment though, it opens up the opportunity for extra tasks like pre and post scripts.
Product | Application Manager |
We have an open idea for implementing pre and post scripts support that this is related to. Good additional ideas for installation wrapper functionalities!