Our EnergyWatch app crashes on Android with AIR 3.8

[Oquisto]

Please help!

We have been running an Android app - EnergyWatch - (available on Google Play) for about one year now. Suddenly after customers having received the 3.8 AIR upgrade the app crashes during initialisation. We are using Secure Socket API for communication, and USB debugging tells me that the app seems to crash just before it receives the ON_CONNECT event.

Everything still works fine on iOS (still runnning an older, embedded AIR runtime)

Everything also works fine on Windows with AIR 3.8 installed.

I've tried two different builds:

Flash Prof. CS 5.5, with AIR 2.6 (same build environment as the current version on Google Play)

Flash Prof. CS 6, with AIR 3.4.

Exactly the same behaviour on both builds.

I really don't know what to do.

1. Are there any changes made to the Secure Socket API, especially on Android?

2. Could we recommend our users to downgrade the AIR runtime? If possible, where can we find the previous runtime version?

Tomas Öquist

Perific Technologies AB, Stockholm, Sweden

[Damanjit Singh]

Hi Tomas,

We are actively investigating this issue.

Meanwhile, there is a possible workaround you could try to help your customers.

You could package your Android app with AIR 3.7 with embedded runtime (captive) and publish that app on Google Play. Since it will have embedded (captive) runtime, it won't matter even if your customers have AIR 3.8 installed. You could get older AIR SDKs here -

http://helpx.adobe.com/air/kb/archived-air-sdk-version.html.

Hope that helps.

[Oquisto]

Hi Damanjit,

Thanks for your response. We actually made exactly what you suggested last night, now having our app running again with AIR embedded (app size grew from 1MB to 10MB ). Works fine for our app in both Sweden and Finland, so there's no panic any longer. However, we hope you can dig into this and see what has happened, so that we can revert back to the old way of building the app. Please let me know if you need any more info from us.

Best regards,

Tomas

[Damanjit Singh]

Thanks Tomas for confirming.

Would it be possible for you to share a sample piece of code that crashes for you in AIR 3.8. As you mentioned earlier, I guess, its something  around ON_CONNECT event for secure sockets.

Thanks again,

Daman

[Oquisto]

Daman,

I will try to isolate the part that makes the secure socket connection. It may take a couple of days though since I'm currently on vacation.

/Tomas

[chris.campbell]

Hi Tomas,

If possible, could you please add a bug report on this over at bugbase.adobe.com?  It would be best if you could attach any sample projects you have to the bug report.

Thanks,

Chris

[Oquisto]

Hi Daman, Chris,

I have now a very stripped project showing this SecureSocket connect problem. Do you have an email address that I could send it to for your review?

Thanks,

Tomas

[nimitja]

Hi Tomas,

Yes, please share it at nimitja@adobedotcom , this will help us alot.

Regards,

Nimit

[nimitja]

Hi Oquisto,

The bug has been fixed and the build is available at http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/air.html, please give it a try and let us know if you will face any issue.

Regards,

Nimit

[Adama-China]

HI, Tomas

     may i give you an advise?

   If you really want your app run stable . PLZ  package with "captive runtime" .

  In my experience.  Adobe guys  will change API Behavior ,change  API ,change everything random  except themself .   Do you remember the  ShareObject behavior changed  at  AIR3.5.

  since  they cann't be trusted , you should always embeded AIR runtime . for your users, for  yourself ,especially  for adobe .

  For all of AS3 developer ,God ,please bless us.

Raymond

[Oquisto]

Hi Raymond,

Sorry for late reply, but thanks for the input!

We managed to release a working app by doing exactly that, embed an old AIR version into the app image. As you say, probably this is the only way to go in order to minimize the risk of having an app that suddenly stops working. We also build our app for iOS, with embedded AIR as the only option, thus the iOS version wasn't affected by the new AIR release. If you want your nightly sleep, this seems to be the only way to go...

Thanks again,

Tomas