I have just upgraded my DT 2.4 windows to 2.6 with success, apparently……………….o)!
During the upgrade I got the following message: Darktable is already installed. Do you want to uninstall before installing the new version yes/no? (maybe the wording is not exactly correct).
How are you supposed to respond to this and what are the consequences of the two options?
I don’t know what the consequences are, if you say “no”. Maybe you can not install, maybe you get both versions in parallel. But you must definately uninstall the old version to “upgrade”, which is just the installation of the new version.
I answered “yes” and the installation was successful.
I think it would be a good option to be able to run both versions in parallel (or to be able to go back to the previous version) in case of problems with the new version but this is not possible?
This depends on how a software is integrated into the operation system. There are certainly ways to achieve this but it might result in new problems. It is also not the standard for software installation under Windows.
Ok, thank you.
We never had planned and/or tested side-by-side installations of darktable, hence I’d not recommend it.
Different versions in parallel could be problematic since when running a new feature release the library database is adapted to the requirements of new features and there is no simple way back. Therefore, backup of the db before upgrade is highly recommended.
How can I use a backup of a database created before and update, when it is not possible to reinstall the previous version of darktable?
Why should it not be possible to go back to a previous version? The backup is for exactly that case, if the new version does not run correctly or does not get the database upgrade right and you therefore have to go back to an earlier version or wait for a bugfix release and try again with an intact database.
This never looks like it got fully explained and with the update to 3.0 coming soon it might be nice if this point was clarified…