autoupdate

This is the Meteor package that provides hot code push (HCP) functionality.

Every Meteor application that wasn’t created with the --minimal option has this package already through meteor-base and HCP should work out of the box. For those running --minimal applications and want to benefit from this package, just add it with meteor add autoupdate.

autoupdate adds up to 30KB on your client’s production bundle.

With this package Meteor will use DDP to publish a collection called ‘meteor_autoupdate_clientVersions’. This collection will be subscribed by the user’s client and every time the client identifies a change in the published version it will refresh itself.

Browser Client

The refresh will happen in the browser in two different ways: a soft update, and a hard update. If Meteor identifies that only stylesheets were changed, then it will verify if the user’s browser is capable of reloading CSS on the fly, and a soft update will take place. The soft update will replace the old stylesheet with the new stylesheet without triggering a full page reload.

In cases where a change in a server’s or client’s compiled file happens, the hard update will take place: Meteor will force a complete browser reload using the reload package.

Among other things, the reload package tries do reload the application preserving some unchanged cached files.

Cordova Client

There is no soft update with Cordova apps, the client is always fully refreshed once a change is detected.

usesCleartextTraffic

Starting with Android 9 (API level 28), cleartext support is disabled by default. During development autoupdate uses cleartext to publish new client versions. If your app targets Android 9 or greater, it will be necessary to create a mobile-config.js file enabling the use of cleartext in order to have HCP working:

App.appendToConfig(`<edit-config file="app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml"
                     mode="merge"
                     target="/manifest/application"
                     xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
        <application android:usesCleartextTraffic="true"></application>
    </edit-config>
`);

--mobile-server

Additionally, for the HCP functionality to work it is also mandatory to provide the address for the application server with --mobile-server option. If you’re testing your app on an emulator you should run it with meteor run android --mobile-server 10.0.2.2:3000. If you’re running it on a real device, the application server and the device should be on the same network, and you should run your app with meteor run android --mobile-server XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX where XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX is your local development address, e.g. 192.168.1.4.

To have a better understanding of how HCP works for mobile apps already published to production refer to Hot code push on mobile