Bugzilla – Bug 1772
Windows installer creates duplicate software entry when upgrading
Last modified: 2019-06-17 05:05:58 UTC
When using the EXE installer to upgrade a previous version of Audacity from 2.1.3 to 2.2.0, the user gains an additional entry in their control panel software list, so that it appears that they have two instances of Audacity installed. This then causes difficulties if the user attempts to uninstall one or both of these apparent instances. What should happen is that the 2.1.3 entry in the software list should be replaced when upgrading. That is, if Audacity 2.2.0 is installed to a new directory so that there are two versions of Audacity installed, then there should be two entries in the CP, but if the older version is overwritten, then there should only be one (the new version) listed.
Copied from the devel email list: This bug caused by changing the “Product Name” string in the win\audacity.rc file (JC 2nd April 2017). In 2.1.3 and earlier this string had the value “Audacity®” and was changed to “Audacity” – without the special character. The string is used by the installer script win\audacity.iss to set the variable AppName which is in turn used as the key in the registry at \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\<key> to locate the uninstall script. Since these keys do not match, 2.1.3 is not uninstalled when 2.2.0 is installed and two entries appear in the Control Panel – Programs & Features. 2.2.0 installs into the same directories as 2.1.3, so two uninstall entries are left behind … big mess. Suggestion – use a GUID in the [Setup] parameter “AppID” which will then be used as the registry key for Uninstall. This has the advantage that it is not sensitive to localisation issues, however if/when the change to use AppID is made there will need to be changes made to the script to uninstall 2.2.0 and later. Regards, Mike Barker
Mike Barker's comments show that installing 2.3.2 over 2.3.1 will not have the same problem.
