2College_MLS wrote:(Another perfectly good reason to publish an upgrade package). Hence my question, will there be an upgrade package in the future?
No i don't think so.
The changes between the two versions are so big (especially all the extra work Wiedmann has introduced in XAMPP 1.7.3 for Windows) that a upgrade version is really really difficult to create, if maybe not impossible i don't know.
2College_MLS wrote:This because, I imagine, a lot of people use Xammp in a production network and want to minimize downtime for their network users, as in my case.
I just can say, that it is many times emphasized that XAMPP is not made for production use (especially because of security issues) and that there is never a guarantee that the next XAMPP package will come with an upgrade version. Thats the price you have to pay if you act against this recommendation and the price to pay for some free to use open source software as well.
If you want to have a upgradeble Webserver environment install all the single components on your own or use Webserver packages especially made for production use (like the Zend Server Releases).