CODEWITHSUNDEEP
codenameone
Derek Johnson
Derek Johnson

Reputation: 812

How Does a Codename One Update "Work"

A recent question in the Codename One discussion forum raised a question I often face when I'm waiting for a fix.

Sometimes the Codename One team indicates a fix would be coming in a couple of weeks and other times they indicate that its already fixed. Some of that opacity obviously relates to the update of the cloud servers but its unclear for me whether its just the cloud server & the plugin or is there something that I'm missing. Why isn't there a single update process?

I'd really like a more definitive answer like How does Codename One work? for this.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 141

Answers (1)

Shai Almog
Shai Almog

Reputation: 52760

Codename One is comprised of several different pieces and an update usually means we update only one of them. At a high level there are really just 2 major types of updates: libraries & servers.

We update libraries once every 3-5 weeks we update servers all the time (sometimes more than once per day sometimes ever 3-4 days).

Here is a slightly more accurate overview of what it means to update Codename One:

  • Plugin & related tools - the plugin itself provides the project properties, server connectivity and designer/gui builder tools. It updates as part of the native IDE update process once every 3-5 weeks. You need to explicitly accept an update prompt from the IDE in order to get this update. Bugs in the plugin itself or features for the designer/GUI builder need to go thru that process...

    • Build.xml - this is technically a part of the plugin update but you need to actually accept changes that we make to the build.xml to get some functionality. On occasion a new feature (e.g. the new GUI builder) needs to update the build.xml code but this will only happen if you go into project properties, click OK and accept the prompt to update the build.xml (if such an update exists).

  • Client libraries - these are the API's you use when writing Codename One code (typically CodenameOne.jar and related ports). We usually issue an update to those once every 3-5 weeks together with the plugin update. The plugin ships with these but they are only applied to new projects... When you send a build we implicitly update your libraries to the latest version using a separate update process, you can also use "Update Client Libs" within the Codename One preference to update these manually without sending a build.

  • Device libraries - when you send a build to the servers we use the latest version of the client libraries that might be newer than what you see in the client libs but might not be the latest git master. This allows us to rapidly deploy & test device fixes. This also allows you to work with the code and use newer features that weren't pushed to the Client Libraries. The process of updating the servers is a bit adhoc so there is some opacity around that, we are looking at making this more transparent.

  • VM & builders - The builder code and VM relate to the server side scripts that generate the code. When you have a compilation error on the servers or need an enhancement there we need to deploy it in a process similar to the device libraries deployment.

  • Certificate wizard update - this tool is updated in a completely separate update process despite shipping in the plugin. We had a lot of concerns about Apple changing things suddenly when initially creating this so we decided to allow this to update instantly.

Upvotes: 5

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