This document provides an overview of testing installers and the installation process. It discusses objectives of installation testing such as checking successful installation and uninstallation. It outlines steps for planning installation testing including writing installation plans and rollback procedures. The document also details benefits of testing installers like compatibility with different platforms and operating systems. Finally, it describes other processes that should be tested including installation, update, and uninstallation steps and scenarios.

1. A comprehensive guide to testing installers &
what to look for while testing Installation
programs

2. Introduction
• Many of us face problems while installing the
application in our daily lives. Problems like, application
is taking long time to install or installation process gets
cancelled itself due to storage issues, cache issues, use
of old OS. What is the general step that we take if an
application fails to install, or the installation process is
slower than expected? The next step of a general user
is to either kill the installation process or uninstall the
application that is too slow to use. If your problem still
exists, you can reach out to the installation test
experts. Here, we will have a brief discussion about the
installers, testing the installers, what needs to be
focused upon while testing the installation programs.

3. Objectives of installation Testing
• With the objective of checking the configuration, successful
installation, or uninstallation of software, installation testing
plays a significant role in the testing life cycle. Most
commonly, software installation is performed with the help
of installers. Installers are the programs that require testing
on their own.
• When an application is to be installed in a distributed system,
that is, on an already running environment then a simple set
of instructions can be small. To make this process easier, an
installation plan could be written that includes not only the
installation steps but also the roll-back steps to the old
version, in case any failure occurs.

4. Planning for installation testing
• Installation plan needs to be tested before making it
available for operation in order to avoid problems. This
becomes very important when installation is to be
performed on systems where every second of idle time
leads to loss of funds and reputation, for example,
financial or banking applications. Hence, installation
testing becomes one of the most important tasks while
ensuring the software quality.
• Installation testing can be best summarized as an
integrated approach with writing plans, installation
testing step-by-step, rollback of the installation.

5. Benefits associated with testing
installers
Installer is an ordinary program responsible for performing
functions such as installation, update & uninstallation of the
software. Being a regular program, it has worth noting benefits
that are as follows.

6. Benefits associated with testing
installers
• Involves close interaction with the operating system and is
dependent upon it for the libraries, registry, files.
• Convenient to use due to its instinctive interface, messages
and navigation
• Design of the installation application.
• It offers compatibility of both the native and third-party
components or drivers, libraries, with different platforms.
• Allows compatibility of documents and user settings in
different application versions.
• Along with the benefits, it is very important to consider the
risks associated if the installers do not operate correctly.
Below are the risks involved.

7. Benefits associated with testing
installers
• User data could be lost
• Operating system may experience failure
• Application failure
• Incorrect application operational risk
• There are some additional functional requirements
imposed upon the installer. In today’s era, due to the
abundance of personal computers, operating systems
and servers, software needs to be installed on various
different platforms. Depending upon the environment,
installers must know what they install & where do they
install.

8. Other Processes Needs to be Tested
• Apart from the installation process, there are also other
processes also that need to be tested while analyzing the
Installation programs. Following are the processes that need
to be kept in mind while the installation programs are tested.

9. Other Processes Needs to be Tested
• Installation: First of all, we need to ensure sufficient
resources are available for installing the resources of
application such as RAM, disk space, etc. After that, the
list of files in the installation package should be verified
for its correctness. For this, there should be no
unnecessary files in the package, and during the
selection of different types of installation, or setting
parameters, the paths & file list to them may also differ.
Also, application’s registration in the OS needs to be
checked.

10. Other Processes Needs to be Tested
• To work with files, registration of new and existing
extensions needs to be done beforehand. The user
who puts the application needs to be given the
access rights i.e. right to work with the system
registry, permissions to access the folders and files.
The tester must also verify the correctness of the
installation wizard, must try to install multiple
applications in a single call. Last but not the least,
one must try installing the same application in
different work directories of the same workstation.

11. Other Processes Needs to be Tested
• Update: In the Update process, there are also some
points that need to be checked for its correctness. Like,
the file list must be correct, unnecessary files must not
be present, file list must be checked for different
installation parameters, verification of backward
compatibility of the generated data, try updating the
application while it is running, and also try to abort the
update process.

12. Other Processes Needs to be Tested
• Uninstallation: In this section, we will discuss the points
that need to be tested in an installer while verifying its
correctness. The first thing that needs to be tested is
that whether the application correctly gets removed
upon uninstallation from the installed system registry.
Physical application files should also get removed at the
same time. User must be able to perform uninstallation
while the application is running. Also, it must be
verified that the person who is not authorized with
proper rights can uninstall the application or not.

13. Installation testing at Bugraptors
• We, at BugRaptors, equipped with a team of experts
consider all possible scenarios while testing the
installers being used in the Installation process. All the
three stages, installation, update and uninstallation are
deeply analyzed to improvise the overall product
quality.

14. Thank You !