expo: [expo-updates][iOS] Initial call to fetchUpdateAsync() fails, succeeds on subsequent calls

Summary

We’re developing a ReactNative app using the Expo bare workflow and ReactNativeNavigation for our navigation library. Recently, we updated from Expo 39 to Expo 42. Before doing so, we never had a problem with OTA publishing with our existing code. After the update, however, we are finding that fetchUpdateAsync() fails perhaps 75% of the time or so after we have published an OTA update and restarted our app. Examining the captured error does not provide much information, but it seems the error.code is ERR_UPDATES_FETCH, the error.message is Failed to download new update, and the error.domain is EXUpdatesDatabase.

When an error occurs, we present the user with an alert box with the option to retry (see code below). Upon retrying, fetchUpdateAsync() succeeds.

Since this error does not occur on every update and since it’s possible to just re-run fetchUpdateAsync() and the fetch will succeed on the second call, it seems likely that we’re facing some sort of timeout (or region-related? Our team is based in Japan) issue. Is there an obvious fix for this that I’m missing besides checking for the returned error code and re-running fetchUpdateAsync()? Thank you.

Managed or bare workflow? If you have ios/ or android/ directories in your project, the answer is bare!

bare

What platform(s) does this occur on?

iOS

SDK Version (managed workflow only)

No response

Environment

Expo CLI 4.11.0 environment info:
    System:
      OS: macOS 11.5.1
      Shell: 5.8 - /bin/zsh
    Binaries:
      Node: 16.1.0 - /usr/local/bin/node
      Yarn: 1.22.10 - /usr/local/bin/yarn
      npm: 7.21.0 - /usr/local/bin/npm
      Watchman: 4.9.0 - /usr/local/bin/watchman
    Managers:
      CocoaPods: 1.10.2 - /usr/local/bin/pod
    SDKs:
      iOS SDK:
        Platforms: iOS 14.5, DriverKit 20.4, macOS 11.3, tvOS 14.5, watchOS 7.4
      Android SDK:
        API Levels: 29, 31
        Build Tools: 29.0.2, 31.0.0
        System Images: android-29 | Intel x86 Atom_64, android-29 | Google APIs Intel x86 Atom, android-30 | Google APIs Intel x86 Atom
    IDEs:
      Android Studio: 2020.3 AI-203.7717.56.2031.7621141
      Xcode: 12.5.1/12E507 - /usr/bin/xcodebuild
    npmPackages:
      @expo/webpack-config: ~0.14.0 => 0.14.0 
      expo: ^42.0.0 => 42.0.3 
      react: 17.0.1 => 17.0.1 
      react-dom: 17.0.1 => 17.0.1 
      react-native: 0.64.1 => 0.64.1 
      react-native-web: ~0.17.1 => 0.17.1 
    npmGlobalPackages:
      expo-cli: 4.11.0
    Expo Workflow: bare

Reproducible demo or steps to reproduce from a blank project

Obviously, a release build is required in order to test this (as expo-updating only works for release builds) so it isn’t possible to provide a snack that reproduces the issue we’re seeing, but this is the relevant code:

const checkForUpdatesAndRenderNavigation = async () => {
  try {
    const otaUpdate = await Updates.checkForUpdateAsync();

    if (otaUpdate.isAvailable) {
      await Updates.fetchUpdateAsync();
      await Updates.reloadAsync();
      return;
    }
    renderNavigationRoot();
  } catch (error) {
    showRetryAlert(error, checkForUpdatesAndRenderNavigation);
  }
};

const showRetryAlert = (error, onRetryPress) => {
  Alert.alert(
    'Something went wrong',
    `error: ${error}`,
    [
      {
        text: showRetryAlertRetryButton(),
        onPress: () => onRetryPress(),
      },
    ],
  );
};

// app.json
{
  "expo": {
    ...
    "updates": {
      "fallbackToCacheTimeout": 0,
      "checkAutomatically": "ON_ERROR_RECOVERY"
    },
    ...
  }
}