Assistance with Script To Automate Upgrades with PowerShell - powershell

Question

I'm curious if someone can point me in the right direction here. I support a program that has several possible versions. Some of my customers are always on the latest version, while others seem to only upgrade once every few years. When the software is upgraded, you have to install every subsequent version until you get to the desired new version. So if we have versions 1, 2, 3, 4... all the way to version 10, and someone is upgrading from version 3 to version 9, we'd have to install 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and then 9. Currently we have to manually run each individual version, so I'm looking at creating a script that will silently install each version and stop at the appropriate spot.
Currently, the only way I know to do this is to write a statement for every single possible combination for the original version and potential version. For example:
If starting version is 3 and ending version is 4
install 4
if starting version is 3 and ending version is 5
install 4
install 5
if starting version is 3 and ending version is 6
install 4
install 5
install 6
(and yes, I'm aware that's not proper powershell code, but I'm hoping you can get the jist of what I'm saying there).
So before I spend way too much time writing figuring out every single possible combination (we have upwards of 40 possible installs), does anyone have a suggestion where I can specify the order that the install files have to be run, then prompt for a starting and stopping point so it will only run between those variables? So for example, if a customer is on version 2 and wants to upgrade to version 8, it would just know to start with installing 3 and install every subsequent install until version 8?
Hoping this makes sense and any assistance would be great!

Answer 1

Given your problem statement and assuming you have enough knowledge to run the installs:
$softwareVersion = Get-Version # I assume you have a way to determine this
:installLoop do {
switch ([version]$softwareVersion) {
[version]'1.0' {
Install-V2
}
<# .. #>
default {
# no version?
break installLoop
}
}
$softwareVersion = Get-Version
} until ([version]$softwareVersion -ge [version]'10.0')

Answer 2

This is just a rough draft. In your case, I would utilize the Switch statement inside a Do loop
$BaseVersion = Get-Version #however you are checking... maybe a function you build
$TargetVersion = 10
Do
{
Switch ($BaseVersion)
{
1
{
Write-Host "Starting upgrade to Version 2"
Install-Version2
}
2
{
Write-Host "Starting upgrade to Version 3"
Install-Version3
}
default
{
Write-Host "No Version Detected"
break
}
}
Start-Sleep -Seconds 60 #Wait 1 min for install to complete before checking again
$Global:Baseversion = Get-Version
}Until($BaseVersion -lt $TargetVersion)