Installation – what’s with all .exe files for previous versions of IDE tools

You may notice that in your “Program Files\DevExpress…” folder, there’s an .exe file for each version of IDE tools you’ve installed, e.g.

IDETools-10.1.4.exe
IDETools-10.1.5.10101.exe
IDETools-10.1.5.exe
IDETools-10.1.6.exe

The following questions may raise:

• Are all these really necessary?
• Is there a reason that installing a new version doesn’t clear out the previous versions?
• Can I safely remove them to clean-up my system?

So, the answer is that this is the specificity of DevExpress installation engine. Since they provide different installation packages (a separate IDE tools installer, DXperience installation, which contains controls only, the Universal installer, containing all products they provide) as well as provide the ability to install daily builds, DevExpress has to keep all installation files you run, in order to correctly update the products when installing an update (e.g. if you installed DXperienceUniveral v10.1.5, then install a daily build for the IDE tools, and then run the installation of the latest DXperienceUniveral daily build). So, they specifically do not delete previous installation executables. Probably, the current behavior is not optimal, but this is how their installation engine is currently supposed to work. This behavior isn’t peculiar to the IDE tools installation. However, if needed, you can delete these files, and leave only the latest installation only – it is absolutely safe.

Similar Posts:

• How to request a daily build of DevExpress IDE Tools
• How to install the IDE tools (CodeRush and/or Refactor!)
• How to install multiple IDE tools versions side-by-side
• How to completely uninstall IDE tools (CodeRush and/or Refactor!)
• Deploying DXCore, CodeRush or community plug-ins using a VSIX extension