Upgrading with a replication setup

We are using a MS SQL database and we have set up transaction based replication so that we can run our reporting tools on a dedicated reporting database without affecting the production database. This works very well, except when upgrading SDP. Indeed we are forced to drop the replication before upgrading otherwise we end up with errors like “unable to drop table xyz because it is used for replication”. After the upgrade we need to set up the replication from scratch. Is there no way to avoid this? What is your experience?

Best regards,
Demetrius