Recommended stable AIR version for upcoming release?

FliplineStudios

Hi all, I'm working on an upcoming release for a new app, and was wondering if anyone has any recommendations of the latest stable AIR version we should be using.

Our previous apps from last summer were still built using 33.1.1.63, which has been stable for us on both iOS and Android with low ANR/crash rates. I believe we can still use this version for iOS until April 2021 when they start requiring iOS 14 SDK, though for Google Play we would now need to target API 29. I've heard some developers had used older AIR SDKs and just set the targetSdkVersion to 29 even though it was built with 28, though I'm not sure if this is generally a good practice or not and if it would cause unintended behavior on some devices.

The latest 33.1.1.345 should support iOS 14 SDK as well as Android API 29, though I was curious if anyone has been using this newest AIR version and could weigh in on how stable it is to be used for production (I know the previous .300 introduced some crashing issues on Android, not sure if those have all been addressed here.) We've rarely jumped into the absolute latest version, and with Harman tied up with supporting Flash EOL customers I don't know how quick they'd be able to address any issues that might pop up in this latest release.

I've heard other developers had rolled back to .259 after the crashes in .300 for Android, so I suppose that could be an option at least for Android if it's more stable than .345.

If anyone is currently using any of those options live in production and wouldn't mind sharing their experience, I'd greatly appreciate some suggestions!

djankey

FliplineStudios

FliplineStudios .345 keeps crashing in background on iphone.
Version .259 doesnt have that problem.

playkia

djankey 345 keeps crashing in background on iphone.

Where did you check?
I am currently using .345 and would like to check if this is happening on iOS?

djankey

playkia My app keeps suspending/crashing when the application is in the background.
Leave application in the background couple of minutes... Android is working as usual.
With .259 (and previous versions) my app is working OK - it's not killed/crashed.
I can't find any logs of the crash.

Michoko

Interesting feedback. I also had many crashes on Android with .300, and reverted back to .259, which works fine.

Release .345 was supposed to fix the crashes, but I wasn't brave enough to beta test this. Too bad it still seems to have issues. Would someone have a link to some information/discussions regarding .345 crashes, please? Thanks!

djankey

After changing executeInBackground to false

NativeApplication.nativeApplication.executeInBackground = false;

app works ok (for now - 2 hours without problems)

Jeff

djankey
In case this wasn't clear, any Stage3D app cannot make any calls to Stage3D while executing in background which would cause a crash.
(as noted by Danial in this older issue thread:
https://github.com/Gamua/Starling-Framework/issues/397#issuecomment-25151446 )

Starling ensures its core functions do not call Stage3D when backgrounded, but you could run into trouble if using any ANEs that run in background and you setup any listeners on backgrounded code that then might try to update things like a label on the UI (which could lead to a Stage3D call)

Granted it sounds like a version of AIR could have changed something but it is still worth noting that you also might have to pause/disable anything you are doing with background code that might be triggering something with the Stage3D API.

FliplineStudios

Interesting, I've been testing a .345 build on iOS and Android and haven't seen any background issues yet myself (left an app running overnight on an iPhone X to check), though we don't use Stage3D in this app so maybe that's why we haven't seen it.

So far the .345 build has thankfully been stable during early testing. We're tentatively planning to use .345 for the release, I'll be sure to share any ANR/crash info when we do release it! (and at least we've got the .259 fallback if issues do pop up on Android)