We are actually reorganizing our CRM customizations. Till now we had one main solution which was containing all the customizations and now we would like to split it by technical matters.
So now on our development instance, we have 4 unmanaged solutions that we would like to publish on tests instance which has the old managed solution.
We plan to do the following:
-> Export the 4 solutions to managed
-> Import them to test instance
-> Uninstall the old solution from test instance
I have a doubt concerning that procedure. Will it break something?
At some point we'll have the same customizations from different solutions. What do you think ?
I tested your steps on a trial environment with a couple Solutions and although when I began I believed (as Arun answered) that uninstalling a managed solution would delete all objects regardless of usage by other solutions, when I actually tested it, it's not deleting them. Data was also kept.
So the steps:
-> Export the 4 solutions to managed
-> Import them to test instance
-> Uninstall the old solution from test instance
Might work with no issues.
I would recommend that you make sure to checklist all elements so nothing is left behind.
If you have an available instance I would also say that you first restore a backup and test that everything goes as planned, but from my test it worked out.