Upgraded version not offered, despite existing

[SimonMerrett]

I'm a noob user of winget and I am really happy that there's a way to script application installation on my PC.
I have a specific question about KiCad open source EDA software. I have two versions installed - one which is the previous stable version (9.0.4) and a nightly build for the next major release (9.99) - the latter not installed using winget but it is recognised by winget list. I need both. A week or two ago, stable 9.0.5 was released. When I go to winget and list, it shows that 9.0.4 is the latest and there is no newer release available.

Name                                    Id                                       Version                 Available
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KiCad 9.99                              KiCad.KiCad                              9.99.0.3325.gdabd8cdab8
KiCad 9.0                               KiCad.KiCad                              9.0.4

However the 9.0.5 version is clearly available with winget show KiCad.KiCad --versions --source winget and here.

#19502 makes me think it should be showing up by now, whereas #192959 makes me think that the presence of 9.99 is messing with the way winget checks version order.

Please could someone explain why I might be seeing this behaviour? I realise I can specify the exact version I would like to install, but it would be nice to us the winget upgrade command for peace of mind that manually removing and reinstalling does something unwanted. Is there a workaround?

[Trenly]

9.99.* is greater than 9.0.5, and so you will not see an upgrade available through WinGet because your installed version is greater than the latest version in WinGet. In order to use WinGet to upgrade, you would have to uninstall version 9.99.* first. You can manually install 9.0.5 using winget install KiCad.KiCad --version 9.0.5 --force, but that may have unintended consequences

[SimonMerrett]

That makes sense, having read #192959 but the expected behaviour if 9.0.5 was in the source, from the list command, which prints out

Name                                    Id                                       Version                 Available
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KiCad 9.99                              KiCad.KiCad                              9.99.0.3325.gdabd8cdab8
KiCad 9.0                               KiCad.KiCad                              9.0.4

would be that 9.99 has no available package but 9.0.4 would have. If 9.99 is not available from the specified source(s), then it should offer the highest version available against the 9.0.4 row.

Is it feasible to extend the upgrade command to specify which installed version you want upgraded?

[Trenly]

I'm curious as to why you would expect that as the expected behavior. Many vendors offer software that installs side-by-side, things like SDKs or even many of the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables. If you have the latest version already on your system, then why would you be informed of the older versions being out of date? I understand that the version isn’t in the winget source in this case, but its also not uncommon for versions to be missing from a source

[SimonMerrett]

Perhaps it makes more sense if one understands that the KiCad x.99 is a dev version that is installed from nightly builds and becomes the next (x+1).0.0 release. It is never installed from winget (not an option) but winget detects it by its ID and is able to parse its version.

The reason one would want both versions on their system are several but the key one is that the winget source version is the latest stable version. This is the one which is safe for client work because once you open a project in a major version (e.g. 9.0.x) and save, it cannot be opened by a previous major release. For example KiCad 8.x.x cannot open a file that has been saved in 9.x.x, however (x+1).y.z can always open an x.y.z version file. Ie KiCad has forwards but not backwards compatibility, which I understand is common. Whereas version x.99 is always an unstable release that includes new features and is often attractive to use on low risk projects (e.g. not client work). Once a project has been saved in an x.99 format, it cannot be subsequently opened by a stable x.y.z version, as it is changing the file formats to what will be used in version (x+1).0.0, that isn't compatible with x.y.z format anymore.

One could argue that KiCad should not be using the x.99 nomenclature for something that is closer to (x+1).0.0-rc, but in reality it is a long way of release candidate status for 90% of the time before release (currently an approximately annual cadence).

Does that give some context as to why I treat x.99 version differently from x.0.z (latest stable)?