How do I get older installers and why do I need them?

🚧 Installation
1

I am on Windows 10 version 21H1 Build 19043.1165
The nextcloud update process keeps failing, so I needed to do it manually. My currently installed version of Nextcloud is 3.2.2.20210527 and I am trying to install the latest Nextcloud 3.3.1.

When you install a new version of nextcloud the installer uninstalls the old one first (ok fine). But apparently it needs the installer from the old version when it does that (what?!! why!!!). It’s looking for the .msi installer file for 3.2.2 under a roaming profile directory because … I have no idea why it is doing that. My install files are always kept on a local directory. But there is not one for this version, so I must have gone with the automatic update when I moved to this version instead of manually downloading the installation file (never doing that again!)

The uninstallation won’t accept anything else but that old installer file, and the new install won’t work without the uninstall happening. Were I to try Add/Remove programs I am wondering if that same error would happen … but even so, how would I save my configuration files through that?
If upgrades require old install files (again, why? there is no reason for that!) why is there not an easy download for them?

2

This kind of idiocy reminds me why I won’t touch windoze with a 10 foot pole. Good luck with that, when it hurts too bad, pick a nice linux distro like Fedora to replace it.

3

You are wise to rely on Linux, and Fedora is a decent distribution. Funnily enough, the reason I started saving installers was this same kind of thing happening with another program many years ago. It would save the downloaded installer in the TEMP directory (equivalent of /tmp) which is constantly erased, yet require the old installer on every update. I had previously been manually downloading the Nextcloud installers as well.

Unfortunately I flew too close to the sun, because I guess last time I went with the automatic update on faith, thinking surely Nextcloud’s developers would not do something so silly. You would think a later installer would be able to handle installations from the version right before it. I was wrong.

4

Hi, I know it doesn’t help you, but if this was a general problem and assuming that the Windows client has a very, very large install base, don’t you think it would generate a lot more noise here?