Cocos Creator iOS Hot Update Completes but Still Runs Old Code: How to Fix It

A hot-update implementation that worked on Android reached 100% and restarted successfully on iOS, but the game continued running old code. The updated files may already be on disk; the usual cause is that iOS startup did not restore the hot-update search paths before loading bundled resources.

Troubleshooting

Check the Cocos Creator 3.x Hot-Update Directory

My source path was -s ${path.join(result.dest, resdir)}:

exports.onAfterBuild = function (options, result) {
    let resdir = 'assets';

    if (fs.existsSync(path.join(result.dest, 'data'))) {
        resdir = 'data';
    }
    let cmd = `node version_generator.js -v ${game_version} -u https://lengmo714/${game_version}/ -s ${path.join(result.dest, resdir)} -d ${path.join(Editor.Project.path, "assets\\resources")}`

    console.warn("Hot update path:", cmd);

    exec(cmd, { cwd: Editor.Project.path }, (err, stdout, stderr) => {
        if (!err) return;
        console.error(err);
    });
}

On iOS, the build path is usually:

build/iOS/data

The local path after an update usually looks like:

Documents/asset

In my case, an incorrect Objective-C path caused the mismatch:

After correcting it, the path was right:

Restore searchPaths After the App Restarts

Correcting the path did not solve the problem, which meant it was not the root cause. The update-completion code was:

this._am.setEventCallback(null!);
this._updateListener = null;
var searchPaths = jsb.fileUtils.getSearchPaths();
var newPaths = this._am.getLocalManifest().getSearchPaths();
console.log("---- newPaths", JSON.stringify(newPaths));
Array.prototype.unshift.apply(searchPaths, newPaths);
localStorage.setItem('HotUpdateSearchPaths', JSON.stringify(searchPaths));
jsb.fileUtils.setSearchPaths(searchPaths);
setTimeout(() => {
    game.restart();
}, 100)

I called setSearchPaths only when the update finished. After the restart, I did not restore those paths early in the game startup process, so iOS continued loading the old code.

The simplest fix is to update main.js as follows:

window.self = window;
require("src/system.bundle.js");

// Restore hot-update search paths before loading the application.
const jsb = window['jsb'];
if (jsb && jsb.fileUtils) {
    const hotUpdateSearchPaths = localStorage.getItem('HotUpdateSearchPaths');
    if (hotUpdateSearchPaths) {
        const paths = JSON.parse(hotUpdateSearchPaths);
        jsb.fileUtils.setSearchPaths(paths);
        console.log("--- restore HotUpdateSearchPaths:", paths);
    }
}

const importMapJson = jsb.fileUtils.getStringFromFile("src/import-map.json");
const importMap = JSON.parse(importMapJson);
System.warmup({
    importMap,
    importMapUrl: 'src/import-map.json',
    defaultHandler: (urlNoSchema) => {
        require(urlNoSchema.startsWith('/') ? urlNoSchema.substr(1) : urlNoSchema);
    },
});

System.import('./src/application.js')
.then(({ Application }) => {
    return new Application();
}).then((application) => {
    return System.import('cc').then((cc) => {
        require('jsb-adapter/engine-adapter.js');
        return application.init(cc);
    }).then(() => {
        return application.start();
    });
}).catch((err) => {
    console.error(err.toString() + ', stack: ' + err.stack);
});

Correcting the native path and restoring the saved search paths at startup solved the problem.