Component ID best practices for side-by-side installations

[KristoferA]

Question

I have a couple of installers that install the same app/product side-by-side for different environments; there is a test environment and a prod environment that share mostly the same files but have different configuration files/etc.

The different environment versions get installed in different folders under the program files folder, e.g. c:\program files\company\productname\test and c:\program files\company\productname\prod.

At the moment I have precompiler variables that contain different upgrade codes and different partial GUIDs for the component IDs:

  <?define UPGRADECODE_PROD="{f81962d0-2293-4181-bd7a-1a18a52a9d20}" ?>
  <?define UPGRADECODE_TEST="{f81962d1-2293-4181-bd7a-1a18a52a9d20}" ?>

  <?define COMPONENTCODE_PROD="0021" ?>
  <?define COMPONENTCODE_TEST="0023" ?>

...and then the COMPONENTCODE_{environment} is inserted in the component ID:

<Component Id="App.1694a70b05004bf391ed8524110512b4" Guid="1694a70b$(var.COMPONENTCODE_PROD)4bf391ed8524110512b4">
  <File .... />
</Component>

Is there a better way to do this?

Since the different environment-versions of the app are installed side-by-side I think using auto-generated component guids ("*") is not an option?

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