A customer installs version 1 of my app. Uses the Splunk Web UI to make changes to one of the saved searches. This search is now in the local folder. ($SplunkHome/etc/apps/MyApp/local). I release version 2 of my app. The customer upgrades the app. But the saved search residing in the local folder would not be updated (There would not be any local folder in my app). Other custom reports created by the customer are also present in the local folder.
One way to ensure that the saved search in local folder is upgraded is by deleting it from there. Is there any other way to achieve this?
This is true for the "upgrade" process (using RPM or gz files). It is not true if you are using deployment server to push new apps. The old directory (xyz-app directory) always get deleted and push from the deployment server.
I don't know of better way of doing this!
Thats exactly the purpose of those folders. The local one is used for customizations, and won´t be overrided by updates, therefore the default folder is used to deploy upgrades of the default app without overwritting customizations.
So the only way would be delete custom searches, or update them manually in the local folder
Regards