Deploying a solution more than once behavior?

[Joshua-Young]

We are on ArcGIS Enterprise 11.5. I am noticing that when I try to deploy a solution a second time instead of creating a new folder with all new items what happens instead is a new folder is created with a new solution item but the only other items in the new folder are apps, maps, or services that were not in the original solution or I deleted from the original solution. Is that the expected behavior?

For example, two years ago I deployed version 1.0 of the GIS Request Management solution to test but my boss cancelled the deployment for something else. I never deleted that deployed solution. Now I have an opportunity to deploy it again. We are now on 11.5 and have access to version 1.1 of the GIS Request Management solution. I deployed version 1.1 and all that was added to a new folder was a solution item, the site item, the site page item, and the GIS_Activities_surveys view (I don't remember why but I had to delete and recreate that view in version 1.0).

I was hoping that it would create a whole new copy of the solution and not link to the old deployment in any way.

[ChrisFox · Accepted solution]

Hi @Joshua-Young, what you are describing is intended behavior. When you deploy an updated version it will reuse items from the previous version that are unchanged and only give you the new/updated items. If you want a fresh new version you can deploy it 2x. The first time it will reuse the items from the previous deployment. The second time you will get all new items.

We are working on an enhancement for a future release that will give you more control over this when you deploy and allow you to explicitly decide whether you want to deploy all new items, or reuse items from a previous deployment.