Hi!
I made an app with Expo and I’m getting issue with updating my app. This happens only on Android.
Basically, I release my app on the store and then made some fixes. I then published with exp publish. First of all, the published version is never installed directly when I open the app. I have to close and open the app again to get it.
The main problem right is is that the same behavior happens on newly installed app. Someone who install the app right after the publish doesn’t get the update. Because of that, I decided to make a new build for android apk and to make a new release on the store. After that, I installed the new version from the store (after clearer the cache and uninstalling the previous version) and it had the same issue!
The new app was like previous version. Like if it build a new .apk without taking the change I made in the code! I had to close the app and open it again to get the update. As I said at the beginning, it only happens for Android.
Hi @arivest - sorry for the confusion here. We’re working on some changes to the OTA update process that should make this process clearer in SDK 26, but for now, here’s the deal:
Your first paragraph indeed describes the expected behavior as of SDK 25. When the app is launched, it uses the cached (stale) version of your app so that it can launch right away. Meanwhile, the new version is downloaded in the background, and is used next time the app is started. This will change in SDK 26 most likely, but for now that’s the expected behavior.
Your second paragraph is a bit more confusing. Sometimes a cached stale version of the app can be launched from an apk installed over an older version, if the cached app was loaded after the time the apk was built. However, this should not be happening for newly installed apks (after you uninstalled the previous apk). Are you sure that you published the new version of your app before building the apk?
A couple months ago, I found out that Expo was publishing automatically publishing the app before building the new version. (That’s what my exp build:android log and Adam Perry told me).
So why would you need to publish the app again before building it?
@arivest - We’ve had some changes to the behavior of exp build:android recently regarding publishing. If you’re on the most recent version of exp (49.0.1, I believe), it should have the behavior you’re describing, but that may not be the case for some other recent versions (sorry for the confusion…)
You could try to see if you can reproduce that issue again, but making sure you have the latest exp. Another option would be to unzip the newer apk file and see which bundle version it actually contains.