AIR Runtime Upgrade Fails on Windows

Question

Hi there,
I've a customer trying to use an Adobe AIR application which I develop and they're running into some difficulty when it comes to upgrading the application. Here's the setup:
1. User has 3.2 version of Eye-Fi Center AIR application installed on their machine. Version 3.2 of Eye-Fi Center requires AIR 2.0. User has AIR 2.0 runtime running on their machine.
2. User tries to upgrade to 3.3 version of Eye-Fi Center AIR application. Version 3.3 of Eye-Fi Center requires AIR 2.5.
3. The necessary upgrade from AIR 2.0 to AIR 2.5 fails.
Here's the log output:
[2011-04-05:14:20:06] Bootstrapper begin with version 2.5.0.16600 on Win x86
[2011-04-05:14:20:06] Installed runtime (2.0.4.13090) located at c:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe AIR
[2011-04-05:14:20:06] Launching subprocess with commandline "Adobe AIR Application Installer.exe" -silent -location "C:\Program Files\Eye-Fi" -programMenu "C:\Users\prabha\AppData\Local\Temp\AIRB93E.tmp\Eye-Fi Center"
[2011-04-05:14:20:06] Starting silent app install of file:///C:/Users/prabha/AppData/Local/Temp/AIRB93E.tmp/Eye-Fi%20Center
[2011-04-05:14:20:06] UI SWF load is complete
[2011-04-05:14:20:06] UI initialized
[2011-04-05:14:20:06] Detected native app installer
[2011-04-05:14:20:06] style being loaded from Resources/stylesNative.swf
[2011-04-05:14:20:06] Validating the native package at file:///C:/Users/prabha/AppData/Local/Temp/AIRB93E.tmp/Eye-Fi%20Center
[2011-04-05:14:20:10] unpackaging/validation is complete
[2011-04-05:14:20:10] starting cleanup of temporary files
[2011-04-05:14:20:10] application installer exiting
[2011-04-05:14:20:10] Subprocess Application Installer failed (9)
[2011-04-05:14:20:10] Bootstrapper end with exit code 9
Any ideas on why this might be happening?
Sean

Answer 1

Hi Sean,
I asked one of our devs about this and here's what he had to say:
I think this is a limitation of the installers, and not a new one. In graphical mode, when the runtime encounters an air file with an unrecognized namespace it triggers an immediate update of the runtime with some corresponding UI. But when we're in silent mode we can't show an update UI, so we just fail. If you're going to do a silent install of an air app during your install, you need to have some logic to ensure the runtime is sufficient before you start, either by having copy or the latest runtime in your installer or by downloading it. I think this sort of thing is spelled out in our redistribution kit, but it may be less obvious with native installers, which normally always update themselves
Hope this helps.  If this isn't sufficient, would you mind opening a new bug on this so we can follow up further?
http://bugbase.adobe.com
Thanks,
Chris