Following a helpful and enlightening conversation with some Safe staffers I learned that Safe is working on some upgrades to the FME software update process and I was encouraged to add my thoughts as an Idea. I’m sure other feedback would be welcome as well!
In our case, we have a client who is restricted to an older Esri software version due to various dependencies but this means they are now also restricted to a maximum FME version of 2025.2.x as 2026.x does not support their older Esri software.
It would be a significant help if the FME upgrade process could be made more modular so that, for example, core functionality (e.g. transformers, reprojection, etc.) could be updated while older readers/writers could be retained for backwards compatibility.
Safe have started down this path with the concept of packages for certain functionality but it would be great if this could be extended to provide even more flexibility in the upgrade process.
Upvote and add a comment if you have specific use cases which would be helpful for you!