Automatic Rollback

What is Automatic Rollback?

Automatic rollback protects your app from getting stuck on crashing bundles. When a new update causes your app to crash, Hot Updater automatically detects the problem and rolls back to the last stable version.

This happens automatically when you use HotUpdater.wrap(). No manual intervention needed.

How It Works

When you deploy a new bundle, Hot Updater follows this process:

1. Download: The new bundle downloads and is marked as "staging"
2. First Launch: App restarts and loads the new bundle
3. Verification:
   • If the bundle loads successfully, HotUpdater.wrap() automatically verifies it
   • The bundle is promoted to "stable" status
4. Rollback: If the app crashes before verification, the next launch detects the crash and rolls back to the last stable bundle

HotUpdater.wrap() handles verification automatically by calling notifyAppReady() when your app initializes. You don't need to call this function manually.

Crash Detection

Hot Updater uses a two-launch detection strategy to identify crashed bundles:

First Launch with New Bundle:

• App attempts to load the new staging bundle
• If everything works, the bundle is verified and promoted
• If a crash occurs, the app exits before verification

Second Launch after Crash:

• Hot Updater detects that the previous launch didn't complete verification
• The staging bundle is marked as crashed and added to crash history
• App automatically rolls back to the last stable bundle
• Your app starts safely with the working version

This two-launch approach prevents false positives from normal startup delays or initialization code.

Managing Crashed Bundles

Hot Updater tracks bundles that have crashed using a crash history system.

getCrashHistory()

Returns an array of bundle IDs that previously caused crashes. Use this to monitor which bundles are failing.

import { HotUpdater } from "@hot-updater/react-native";

function checkCrashedBundles() {
  const crashedBundles = HotUpdater.getCrashHistory();

  if (crashedBundles.length > 0) {
    console.log("Crashed bundles:", crashedBundles);
    // Send to your monitoring service
  }
}

Use cases:

• Monitor deployment health
• Track which bundles are causing issues
• Debug production problems

clearCrashHistory()

Clears the crash history to allow retrying a previously failed bundle. Use this after fixing a crashing bundle.

import { HotUpdater } from "@hot-updater/react-native";

async function retryFailedBundle() {
  // Clear the crash history
  HotUpdater.clearCrashHistory();

  // Now you can try deploying the fixed bundle again
  console.log("Crash history cleared - bundle can be retried");
}

Use cases:

• After fixing a bug in a crashed bundle
• Allowing redeployment of a corrected version
• Resetting crash state for testing

Crash History Blocking

When a bundle crashes, Hot Updater adds it to the crash history and blocks future deployments of that exact bundle ID. This prevents infinite crash loops.

To deploy a fixed version:

1. Fix the bug in your code
2. Deploy with a new bundle ID (happens automatically with hot-updater deploy)
3. The new bundle ID bypasses the crash history

If you need to retry the same bundle ID:

1. Verify the bundle is fixed
2. Call clearCrashHistory() to reset the blocked list
3. Redeploy the bundle