Sharepoint lists tied to the feature that created them?

We're doing something to appease our installation team that is giving me fits. We have a set of SharePoint lists that never change, but every time we release a new version of our code, management is forcing us to create a NEW feature that is named after the current release number that creates the SAME SharePoint lists. So for instance, we have a list named Connections. A feature called OurProductListsVersion1.1 creates this list. When version 1.2 of our product comes out, a feature called OurProductListsVersion1.2 will be created and that feature will create a list named Connections.

The way our features currently work is that if OurProductListsVersion1.1 creates Products, and then OurProductListsVersion1.2 is deployed, OurProductListsVersion1.1 cannot be retracted because it created Prod开发者_运维问答ucts, and Products is tied to that feature. If OurProductListsVersion1.1 is retracted, we get this error:

feature 'xx' for list template 'xxx' is not installed in this farm.

This error leads me to believe that the FeatureID of whatever feature creates Products is tied to Products, and Products needs that feature to be available to work. Is there any way to update the FeatureID in Products as we install a new feature that tries to create Products?

Element Manifests (list definitions, list instances, etc.) that are deployed as part of a feature are retracted when the feature they are tied to is deactivated.

Have you looked into SharePoint 2010's new Feature Versioning feature?

Basically, you can now give your feature's a version number (1.1.0.0, for example) and define upgrade actions when going from a previous version number to a newer version.