Standalone application does not update when a new bundle is published

[christiantucker]

Perhaps I’m missunderstanding here, but I thought EXPO came with OTA updates, so that I could just publish an (non-native) update to the javascript bundle via XDE and then user’s would download the updated bundle on next app load.

This hasn’t happened for us and I’m conflicted on if there’s a problem or if I need to eject and use codepush.

[jesse]

Hi @christiantucker. Yes, we support OTA updates. I’d recommend reading this guide: https://docs.expo.io/versions/latest/guides/publishing.html#content. It’s hard to tell exactly what happened without more details. One important note is that we download the new JS in the background so you might have to open the app twice to get the new code.

[christiantucker]

Hey @jesse thanks for the response, If you check your documentation for configuration of the OTA updates here: https://docs.expo.io/versions/latest/guides/offline-support.html you will notice that it says on iOS background updating is experimental and needs to be manually enabled.

This leads me to believe that on iOS the standard behaviour is to block the UI thread and download the new update during the <AppLoading /> display.

Is there a way to toggle between rather or not an update should be downloaded in the background or have a UI blocking affect? For example, if you’re rolling out a new API and a new version of the application with new features that talk to that API. That would be a “Required” update, as you would want everyone on the same version to make sure that conflicts don’t happen.

I understand that reverse compatability exists for a reason, but that’s not always something that a company will be able to support when bumping a major version.

For most small patches updating in the background is fine, even for some minor feature updates, new features, etc. But in the case of a large update, you want to make sure that the user is forced into it.

[adamjnav]

Hey @christiantucker,

When SDK26 is released this week, it contains a new Updates API that will give you a lot more control over how and when your application handles its OTA updates. Additionally, we will be releasing a blog post regarding the Updates API this week as well so look out for that to get a better grasp on what is all possible by leveraging the new API.

Cheers,

Adam