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John L.
John L.

Reputation: 1953

Xamarin - Updating The App Without App Store

Is there a technical limitation why Xamarin does not support updating the application without publishing to the app store? Javascript cross-platform mobile development frameworks like React Native or Cordova can do this.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2192

Answers (2)

Jon Douglas
Jon Douglas

Reputation: 13176

You are comparing Apples to Oranges in a sense. When it comes down to Native Development, Xamarin is a framework that allows you to do Native Development via Wrappers: https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/getting_started/introduction_to_mobile_development/#How_Does_Xamarin_Work

Because of this, you would do the same workflow as if you were pushing an update to your Native Android/iOS application(Programmed in Java/Obj-C respectfully).

Whereas on the other side with frameworks like React/Cordova, they have mechanisms to inject content via pulling from a server-side service. This is explained pretty clearly in a third party cordova project that does this very thing:

https://github.com/markmarijnissen/cordova-app-loader

However if you made a local Cordova application that had no connection to a server-side service and you needed to update it, you would most likely have to follow the same procedure of uploading the new .ipa / .apk with the new assets/code/etc as it would be a packaged stand-alone app.

Upvotes: 4

valdetero
valdetero

Reputation: 4652

That's because all the code is in js files that can be downloaded an replaced out side of the ARM binary. Xamarin's code is the binary. Also, if your code is in the App Store, you should be updating through the store. This is less of a limitation of Xamarin (since you can't do this with native obj-c apps either) and more of a "pro" for the js apps.

As a side note, if you go with Enterprise deployment instead of App Store, you can update whenever you want (because you completely control the deployment mechanism).

Upvotes: 0

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