Designer Versions

I’m not sure what to search for to answer my question but I tried a few things and nothing came up.

I support a number of systems at various levels of Ignition. Is it safe to make edits to an older version of Ignition using a newer designer launcher? For example, can I use the latest designer launcher to safely make changes to an 8.1.14 system?

I think the answer is yes but I just wanted to play it safe and ask.

Yes, the launchers are intended to be backwards compatible, at least within an Ignition major version. And they are often forward-compatible.

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I’ve been editing a variety of versions and never had any problem. You should be fine.

Excellent, thank you.

The launcher is just a middleman, you aren’t ever actually running a Designer that is a different version than the Gateway it’s connected to. The launcher connects to the gateway, downloads the files needed if you don’t have them cached, then launches a Designer version that matches the Gateway.

If I’m understanding correctly, I still can’t build all my screens on a development machine running the latest build and then copy/paste deploy them to a live system that’s running an old version. Is that correct?

Sometimes it’s hard to get customers to update their Ignition to the latest because they have a perception that it will create a lot of downtime.

That’s the assumption you should develop under, yes. We don’t preserve compatibility in that direction.

It might work sometimes, with some resources, but nothing guaranteed.

Ok, thank you.

Generally only if you hack the project file to lie about its version. Never, ever, do this on a production system.