How to force update of custom maintenance tool?

[zaphod.b]

We roll out our software by providing installers created with IFW. It now sometimes happens we need to update our custom maintenance tool itself. However, it is not itself part of the installation and thus isn't updated by IFW's own mechanism.

How can we force an update of our maintenance tool on the users before the 'actual' update runs?

I've seen Qt themselves do this so there must be a way.

[zaphod.b]

This is still an issue. Does someone have an answer meanwhile?

Do I need to add a component for the maintenance tool (that I could declare <ForceUpdate>true<ForceUpdate/>)? That would require a 2-stage installer build, wouldn't it? And how would this component and installer's own dealing with maintenance tool get along with each other?

How do Qt themselves accomplish this? Is there a dedicated built-in way? Certainly the requirement to update maintenance tool first is not an exotic one, as this post's views indicate.