SharePoint 2013: Feature Versioning

Feature Versioning Overview 

Feature versioning allows Features and their associated instances to be easily tracked. Features has a version number that can be specified in the respective feature.xml file. When a Feature is activated, a Feature instance is created and associated with that version of the Feature. When a new version of a feature is deployed, the associated Feature instance also needs an upgrade as the instance version number is lower than the new version number specified in the current feature.xml file.

Update a new column/Modify an existing column

1. Update the Feature version, if a Feature does not have a Version attribute, the version is 0.0.0.0. To update the feature set it to 1.0.0.0

2. Open the feature manifest and add the Upgrade Actions

In the UpgradeActions place a VersionRange to tell the versions you are upgrading from and to. Give it the properties BeginVersion=”1.0.0.0″ and EndVersion=”2.0.0.0″. Between the VersionRange you can specify what will happen when we are upgrading from version 1 to 2.

3. Upgrade the solution in the farm

Update-SPSolution
-Identity FeatureVersioning.wsp
-LiteralPath C:\devprojects\ bin\Debug\ FeatureVersioning.wsp
–GACDeployment

4. After solution update, you need to call a feature.Upgrade(false) method to upgrade the  feature. 
The above method will update all the sites with feature version 1 to 2. That means you can have multiple version of the same feature installed, and selectively upgrade only the features you want. Multiple versions can live side-by-side. 

• Microsoft SharePoint Foundation provides new members that make it possible for you to upgrade custom Features through versioning and declarative upgrade actions. As a result, you can perform the following kinds of modular upgrades to Features in SharePoint Foundation:

• Define upgrade definitions for new Feature versions.
• Provision a list instance as part of a Feature upgrade.
• Create separate upgrade action sets, based on the Feature version, that remove different sets of files.
• Apply settings to site collections where a particular Feature is activated.

• See Also

http://www.sharepointnutsandbolts.com/2010/06/feature-upgrade-part-1-fundamentals.html  
http://www.deepcode.co.uk/2012/09/using-sharepoint-2010-feature-upgrades_28.html  
http://blog.furuknap.net/sharepoint-2010-feature-versions-and-upgrade-support