Installing multiple times fails

Hello,

I'm getting a "There was a problem parsing the package." when I attempt to download and install the same package multiple times. It seems to not download the file, a zero byte file in the downloads folder.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Sideload the app as you see fit.
2. Run the app.
3. Trigger the OTA update and install the app you downloaded. In my case the exact same apk I originally sideloaded.
4. After it successfully installs trigger the OTA update again.
5. It will instantly fail with the error message "There was a problem parsing the package.".

It feels like the plugin thinks that the file has already been downloaded but it hasn't finished the download.

Any ideas?

Thank you,
Michael

I've updated to version 2.2.1 and the issue seems to have changed, it no longer fails with the error message "There was a problem parsing the package.", instead it gets stuck on the state of "INSTALLING" and doesn't trigger the Android sideloading.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Sideload the app as you see fit.
2. Run the app.
3. Trigger the OTA update and install the app you downloaded. In my case the exact same apk I originally sideloaded.
4. After it successfully installs trigger the OTA update again.
5. This time it will download the file and the last status it will display for me is OtaStatus.INSTALLING. This is where it would normally trigger the Android install.
6. However, if I close the app now and start at step ios can't run  #2 again, it will install once and then not again.

I seem to have to close the app in between, even though the install of the new app is closing and restarting the app.

I'll keep investigating as time permits.

[MartinHlavna]

Just curious, what is the use case for this?

I found this when I was testing the OTA updates. I didn't want to keep changing versions when I wanted to keep modifying my screens and workflow for the OTA updates. So for me, if I could keep downloading the same file over and over it was faster and easier to work with while still proving that the updates continued to work.

[MartinHlavna]

Could you try to delete file before downloading and see if problem still persists?

I tried deleting the file before downloading it again and at the time and it didn't help.

[MartinHlavna]

Hi, i've tested this plugin and I found that in some device (ex: samsung A10) the downloaded file is appended with sequential number, if I download the file several times (like myapp.apk, myapp 1.apk, myapp 2,apk). So the installation failed, with error 'File Not Found'.

I am afraid we cannot do anything if device download file like this. Maybe forcing unique name via destinationFilename may solve this for you.

Also, there is another issue. If I build the apk that is using the plugin, the release.apk cannot be installed (if I use flutter build apk --release). But if I use : flutter build apk --splits-per-abi --release (which produces 3 apks per abi), one of the apk can be installed.

How did you install app before running update? It may be signature problem - if you installed debug apk via flutter and trying to install release apk via ota_update this obviously fails. Maybe something similar applies to abi splits? Note that with this plugin you could also use abi spliting but you have to manage a way how to determine which abi download link you pass to ota_update.

[MartinHlavna]

Well, dirty workaround would be to add timestamp after apk name in destinationFilename. It is strange indeed we are not experiencing this either in example or our production apps. I understand that DownloadManager renames the file, but we are trying to delete file before initiating download. Maybe it is permissions problem?