eas update channels question

Expo Development Tools
1

I’ve read the documentation several times very carefully. Have number of releases in testflight as well and my experience does not match how I understand the eas update documentation.

My understanding is that when I push update, it gets routed via the channel and the runtime/dist versions. E.g. when pushing update to preview channel with app.config.js having version 1.0.0 (5), that update would be routed and installed only by the apps built with -e preview option and same version. Is my understanding correct, or is routing happening only via the channel value?

2

what adds to my confusion is how eas automatically increments the ios.buildNumber but not everywhere. This happens when I don’t increment it myself, but build & submit. Somewhere along the way it’s incremented automatically.

Constants.manifest?.runtimeVersion equals what’s fixed in my app.config.js while Application.nativeApplicationVersion reflects the auto-incremented value.