Best practices for pushing AppStacks with user installed apps combined

[szilagyic]

We are currently deploying groups of apps with AppStacks, yet for some users we are also allowing UIA (user installed apps) with Writable Volumes.  In doing this we are trying to divide up the apps in to groups for easier deployment as AppStacks.  However, I was wondering if there could be an issue if a user tries to update an app that is pushed to their VM within an AppStack.  For example, let's say we push a certain application within an AppStack to users that are also able to install their own apps.  And, one of those users installs or upgrades that application on their VM, in which case it would be also saved to their Writable Volume.  What would happen if they did this, and would there be any issues seen?  Does the AppStack and/or Writable Volume take precedence over the other?

I appreciate the feedback on this, thank you!

[Ray_handels · Accepted solution]

It is a little more complicated than this so  I will try and be as thourough as possible.

The first thing you should now is that the writable ALWAYS takes precedence on the appstack so if a user installs or updates an application you provided to him by using an Appstack he or she will get the newer installed application in his writable volume. It does get a bit quircky when the user decidec to remove the application.

Let's say you provided the user with flashpleyer 23.0 and he doesn't want to use it and removes it while his UIA writable is active. The application will then be masked as deleted ( I have referred to this more often on the forums). This means the user doesn't get the application you assigned to him using an appstack. Even if you update it to 23.1 he or she still wont get it because it is marked as deleted. If you upgrade to for example 24 and it is stored in a different folder the user might get the application but it will still mask the old application as deleted what could cause applications to stop working.

If you provide the user with 23, he installs 23.1 and then removes it and you upgrade the appstack to version 23.2 the user still WONT have the application because by removing the 23.1 version this application is masked/marked as deleted and thus doesn't work.

I hope to make some sense here??

What we do now to make sure users dont remove applications that we provide to then is to add the NoRemove=1 key into the uninstall key of the application in the registry. If a user then goes to Programs and Features MMC he doesn't have a uninstall option..

[szilagyic]

Thank you so much for clarifying, that is great to know that the Writable Volume will take precedence over the AppStacks.  That will help us tremendously in how we divide up our AppStacks.

As for removing the "uninstall" option, that is a great tip, thank you for that as well.  We may look at doing the same thing here too.

Thank you!