Topic: How can I force my chumby classic to check for application updates?

Whenever I upload a new version of my application onto the chumby server, it's often not detected by my chumby classic the next time I restart the control panel.

This inconsistency is annoying for developers if they're trying to debug their applications.  How can I force the chumby classic to check for new application versions?

Re: How can I force my chumby classic to check for application updates?

I'm pleased that this is handled correctly on the chumby 8.  Whenever I stop and restart the control panel, it automatically detects the latest version of my widget.

However, the chumby classic behaves differently.  Its control panel doesn't check for widget updates automatically when restarted.  I sometimes have to wait for up to fifteen minutes before this happens.

This is probably the most infuriating thing about developing widgets for the chumby classic.  Can you guys please force the chumby classic to check for widget updates after each restart?

3 (edited by cbreeze 2011-12-28 14:14:56)

Re: How can I force my chumby classic to check for application updates?

Xavion wrote:

I'm pleased that this is handled correctly on the chumby 8.  Whenever I stop and restart the control panel, it automatically detects the latest version of my widget.

However, the chumby classic behaves differently.  Its control panel doesn't check for widget updates automatically when restarted.  I sometimes have to wait for up to fifteen minutes before this happens.

This is probably the most infuriating thing about developing widgets for the chumby classic.  Can you guys please force the chumby classic to check for widget updates after each restart?

So very frustrating...

Chumby One has same issue for what it's worth.  I'm trying to verify an update on a widget right now and I've already spent 15 minutes cycling devices, and still nothing.  Kind of breaks the momentum.

Re: How can I force my chumby classic to check for application updates?

The Chumby Classic does not store anything across reboots except device settings like network configuration.  What you're probably seeing in server-side caching of channels.

On the Chumby One, there is a widget cache in /mnt/storage.  You can clear the cache with the "clear cache" button on the "pi" panel - this will clear any widgets that are cached locally, but will not affect any server cache.  The local widget cache relies on the version of the widget being changed to fetch a new one.

The server-side channel cache is at least 20 minutes.  The network cache in the player uses the HTTP headers for widget expiration, which I think is 24 hours, but does not survive restarts of the Flash Player.

Re: How can I force my chumby classic to check for application updates?

Bearing what you've written in mind, how is the chumby 8 able to detect updated widget versions each time the control panel is manually restarted?  Surely it wouldn't take a genius to copy this update-checking code across for use in the chumby classic.

To give you an indication of how annoying this delay is, none of the following workarounds have any effect.  I've tried pressing the "Clear Cache" button in the 'pi' panel, rebooting the chumby classic and even downloading the widget's instance XML file via 'wget'.

In the latter case, the XML file that was downloaded to the chumby classic already contained the absolute (S3) 'movie' URL.  For some stupid reason, the chumby classic's control panel (v2.8.80) thought it knew better and kept failing to load the relative URL from earlier.

At that point, I fantasised about pitching the chumby in the direction of the nearest brick wall at full speed.  This sort of event would work out well for chumby industries, as people would be forced to upgrade from their recently smashed chumby classics to chumby 8s.

Re: How can I force my chumby classic to check for application updates?

The Chumby 8 uses an entirely different web services API than the Chumby One and Classic, with different caching behavior.

There are almost two orders of magnitude more Chumby Classic and Chumby One devices than Chumby 8s in the field, and thus they represent the vast bulk of server traffic, and hence ongoing cost to Chumby.  Therefore, they have the most aggressive caching schemes of all the devices.