Hello,
i have developed a solution for the company i work for and to simplify a explanation here is a screenshot of the structure.
The solution contains various list definitions as you see. Which means whenever i deploy this solution it "overwrites/wipes" every list already created. This starts to cause problems for me currently. In the past i managed to use backups created with a program named "Sharepoint Content Deployment Wizard". But this does not always work smoothly.
The solution contains also highly customized changes to the normal look and feel of SharePoint. I know and understand this is not very much recommended but it was necessary.
Anyhow due to the fact that SharePoint does not support creation of "SP-Groups inside SP-Groups" (and this feature was also absolutely mandatory to create this solution) i had to come up with a custom solution for this also (ItemEventReceiver modifies Access-Groups of each item saved/modified).
Since people use the solution already actively it causes now trouble make any kind of updates/upgrades without loosing the list and their items already created.
Of course i was doing my research and came across the "Update-SPSolution" cmdlet for the powershell of SharePoint. I have never used this before so i'm a bit afraid to use it. It states that only use it if the files and structure hasn't changed otherwise it will fail.
Basically for most of my cases just the core-dll of the solution changes and perhaps some changes in some .aspx files.
So question is: Is there some big issues if i just update manually the DLL's and ASPX files (best approach?) ? Or is there some better approach at all ?
Any help is highly appreciated.