MIT App Inventor Emulator App Update

[Gongalong]

Hi All,

 

Anyone using MIT App Inventor?

 

In the last couple of weeks they've updated the Android app that runs in the emulator, and the only way to update it is to login as an admin, login to App Inventor, run the emulator, and then update the app.

 

The original installer hasn't been changed, so that can't be used to update the app.

 

Anyone found a quicker way? I have 90 machines to update (!).

 

TIA

[FN-GM]

This is something i am coming back to next week. Do you have to update or can you leave it not updated?

[Gongalong]

Having just checked you can click "Not Now" and it seems to load the app, so not sure how vital the update is. It prompts every time you run it.

 

Also turns out that student accounts *can* update the app. It's a bit buggy, as when it updates it complains about no wi-fi. All you have to do is close the emulator and restart it. Also rarely it seems to have a problem downloading the APK file. I managed to spot the link through our Smoothwall. When you download it manually in Chrome it then seems to pick up on it in the Emulator and update.

[Zedster1974]

We are having the same issue, but have now found what the cause is and what is needed

 

to be achieved to overcome it - just now working out the best way to implement.

 

What we've discovered is that when a new user logs into the computer and runs

 

appinventor, a file "Appinventor-emulator-data" is copied from "c:\Program Files

 

(x86)\AppInventor\commands-for-Appinventor\extras" to the users local folder (c:\Users

 

\username\.appinventor\emulator).

 

This file (in the local user folder) is what is updated when the AppInventor emulator

 

is updated. At no point does the Program files version get touched.

 

So even if we manually update the program files version, all students who have already

 

logged in to the computer still need to do the update process.

 

We are presently investigating several solutions.

 

1. The hammer solution - create and capture a new system image (sccm) and deploy.

2. Manual solution 1 - create a login script for all students that checks if the file

 

exists in the their local profile and if it does delete it and replace it with the

 

updated file - may increase login time

3. As out machines do updates, etc every night - run a script that deletes all

 

references to the file in the c:\users folder and when the student runs Appinventor it

 

copies the updated c:\program files version to where it needs to be.

 

Option 3 is our preferred and at the moment we are in testing to make sure it works as

 

we hope.

 

Hopefully this makes sense and is useful to someone.

[Gongalong]

Is that specifically the Emulator APK update?

 

The APK file it tries to download is at the following address http://dl.qyv.me/MITAI2Companion.apk

 

What confused me is that somewhat frequently it just doesn't download, and I thought this was a privilege issue. Turns out you just need to close the emulator and try again (often 3 or 4 times).

[Gongalong]

These are the instructions I'm giving to the teacher, to in turn give to the students to update the APK:

 

1. Pick Connect > Emulator, to launch the emulator.

2. Once the emulator has started it will offer the chance to update, and they need to pick OK.

(3. Sometimes at this point the update APK file does not download. If it doesn’t they need to close the Emulator and go back to Step 1. It may take 3 or 4 tries.)

4. If they then proceed with installing the update – click the Install button.

5. Once it has installed click the “Done” button, and close the emulator completely (the app will refused to launch properly until the emulator is restarted).

6. Restart the emulator as per Step 1.

[Mattyhew]

Here at our school we cannot update it due to using a proxy server. Have simply opted to not update for now. Seems like its more trouble than its worth.

[Manny-Tech]

Well, this was a massive pain in the backside for us. It's used by around 120 students here. I operated on the same basis as Zedster1974 and their option 3. Got the appinventor-emulator-data file and ran the below on all machines (64bit machines, though you could run an if not exist statement if you have a mixed environment)

 

del "C:\Program Files (x86)\AppInventor\commands-for-Appinventor\extras\Appinventor-emulator-data" /Q

xcopy "C:\Support\Appinventor-emulator-data" "C:\Program Files (x86)\AppInventor\commands-for-Appinventor\extras" /Y /C /I /H /R

 

Obviously C:\Support is a folder on the local machine where the file was copied to.

 

I then just went onto the Users drive on our server and removed all traces of .appinventor folders. The next time the users logged in, it downloaded the latest version and they weren't prompted for an update. Seems ridiculous that you'd put out a 2.2 update but not include the companion with it. Truly bizarre.