I've noticed an issue regarding component "installed state" during a major upgrade. When I am installing the newer version of my MSI I am seeing the following entries regarding component state detection:
MSI (s) (EC:0C) [09:35:52:368]: Component: Test; Installed: Absent; Request: Local; Action: Local
I would expect to see something more like "Installed: Local; Request: Local; Action: Null" since the component is already installed.
I am getting this same result even when the file in my component is the same version.
To make sure there was nothing strange with my MSI I even created a new "basic MSI" project that only contains this one "Test" component and then I set it up to handle the major upgrade.
I don't know if this is important, but we are using RemoveExistingProducts after InstallFinalize so if anything fails during the attempted installation of the new version we can still roll back to the older version.
If REP was before InstallInitialize you'd see two installValidate actions, one from the removal, and one from the new installation.
What you're seeing is quite literal. it is currently "Installed", you want to install it (Request: local), and the installation is still going to process the component for installation (Action: Local) so it can fix or replace reg entries/files.
