expo: `NullPointerException`s when calling `Updates.reloadAsync` with SDK49 in production builds

EDIT: Please see linked comment for repro steps. The cause seems to be from calling reloadAsync from expo-updates.

Minimal reproducible example

https://github.com/patidarsarvesh/ExpoNullPointerIssue

Summary

The problem

We are noticing our app crashing on android with NullPointerException occasionally in production. It is affecting <1% of users, but it’s still consistently happening 1-2 times a day.

Judging from our logs, all crashes seem to be caused by NullPointerException with expo packages. We have seen them so far occur in expo-notifications and expo-location. Here are the stack traces we have:

expo-location

java.lang.NullPointerException: java.lang.NullPointerException
    at expo.modules.kotlin.jni.JavaCallback.invoke(JavaCallback.kt)
    at expo.modules.kotlin.jni.JavaCallback.invoke(JavaCallback.kt:24)
    at expo.modules.kotlin.PromiseKt$toBridgePromise$resolveMethod$1.invoke(Promise.kt:22)
    at expo.modules.kotlin.PromiseKt$toBridgePromise$resolveMethod$1.invoke(Promise.kt:22)
    at expo.modules.kotlin.PromiseKt$toBridgePromise$1.resolve(Promise.kt:29)
    at expo.modules.adapters.react.PromiseWrapper.resolve(PromiseWrapper.java:27)
    at expo.modules.location.LocationHelpers$1.onLocationChanged(LocationHelpers.java:157)
    at expo.modules.location.LocationModule$1.onLocationResult(LocationModule.java:557)
    at com.google.android.gms.internal.location.zzaw.notifyListener(com.google.android.gms:play-services-location@@20.0.0:2)
    at com.google.android.gms.common.api.internal.ListenerHolder.zaa(com.google.android.gms:play-services-base@@18.1.0:2)
    at com.google.android.gms.common.api.internal.zacb.run
    at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:942)
    at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
    at android.os.Looper.loopOnce(Looper.java:226)
    at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:313)

expo-notifications

java.lang.NullPointerException: java.lang.NullPointerException
    at expo.modules.kotlin.jni.JavaCallback.invoke(JavaCallback.kt)
    at expo.modules.kotlin.jni.JavaCallback.invoke(JavaCallback.kt:24)
    at expo.modules.kotlin.jni.PromiseImpl.reject(PromiseImpl.kt:87)
    at expo.modules.kotlin.PromiseKt$toBridgePromise$1.reject(Promise.kt:41)
    at expo.modules.adapters.react.PromiseWrapper.reject(PromiseWrapper.java:36)
    at expo.modules.notifications.notifications.presentation.ExpoNotificationPresentationModule$4.onReceiveResult(ExpoNotificationPresentationModule.java:98)
    at android.os.ResultReceiver$MyResultReceiver.send(ResultReceiver.java:59)
    at android.os.ResultReceiver.send(ResultReceiver.java:93)
    at expo.modules.notifications.service.NotificationsService.handleIntent(NotificationsService.kt:650)
    at expo.modules.notifications.service.NotificationsService$onReceive$1.invoke(NotificationsService.kt:588)
    at expo.modules.notifications.service.NotificationsService$onReceive$1.invoke(NotificationsService.kt:586)
    at kotlin.concurrent.ThreadsKt$thread$thread$1.run(Thread.kt:30)

java.lang.NullPointerException: java.lang.NullPointerException
    at expo.modules.kotlin.jni.JavaCallback.invoke(JavaCallback.kt)
    at expo.modules.kotlin.jni.JavaCallback.invoke(JavaCallback.kt:24)
    at expo.modules.kotlin.jni.PromiseImpl.reject(PromiseImpl.kt:87)
    at expo.modules.kotlin.PromiseKt$toBridgePromise$1.reject(Promise.kt:41)
    at expo.modules.adapters.react.PromiseWrapper.reject(PromiseWrapper.java:36)
    at expo.modules.notifications.tokens.PushTokenModule$1.onComplete(PushTokenModule.java:72)
    at com.google.android.gms.tasks.zzi.run(com.google.android.gms:play-services-tasks@@18.0.2:1)
    at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:938)
    at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
    at android.os.Looper.loopOnce(Looper.java:226)
    at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:313)
    at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:8855)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java)
    at com.android.internal.os.RuntimeInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(RuntimeInit.java:571)
    at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:1135)

other details

• In production, sentry breadcrumbs suggest the expo-notifications crashes happen on app launch (when we setup the notification handler) and when we fetch the expo push token.
• Logs also suggest that the expo-locations crash happens while we fetch location data from the device
• Crashes so far seen on google and samsung devices, and across many different OS versions (10, 11, 13)
• These crashes somewhat resemble #23382 and #17426, but nothing really matches up with what we’re seeing here

repro

We are having problems consistently reproducing the problem, but here is a repo with what we think are the minimum requirements to trigger the crash.

We have tried everything we can think of to try to reproduce it consistently, such as accepting/rejecting permissions, fetching location data frequently, triggering the push notification handler, fetching the push token frequently, and testing from cold start and on entering foreground. see https://github.com/expo/expo/issues/24159#issuecomment-1701761218

If you have any tips on debugging native crashes like this we would be happy to apply them and followup. Both in the reproduction repo and in our production app we don’t write any native code ourselves. We have thought about downgrading to expo 48 to see if that fixes the problem but we didn’t want to go through all that effort yet without knowing the root cause.

Environment

• We use eas-build to build our app for ios & android, but the following is one of our local dev machines

expo-env-info 1.0.5 environment info:
    System:
      OS: macOS 12.6
      Shell: 5.8.1 - /bin/zsh
    Binaries:
      Node: 16.19.0 - ~/.asdf/installs/nodejs/16.19.0/bin/node
      Yarn: 1.22.19 - ~/.asdf/installs/nodejs/16.19.0/bin/yarn
      npm: 8.19.3 - ~/git_repos/<project_name>/node_modules/.bin/npm
    Managers:
      CocoaPods: 1.12.0 - /opt/homebrew/bin/pod
    SDKs:
      iOS SDK:
        Platforms: DriverKit 22.1, iOS 16.1, macOS 13.0, tvOS 16.1, watchOS 9.1
    IDEs:
      Android Studio: 2021.3 AI-213.7172.25.2113.9014738
      Xcode: 14.1/14B47b - /usr/bin/xcodebuild
    npmPackages:
      @expo/metro-config: ^0.10.7 => 0.10.7
      expo: ^49.0.6 => 49.0.6
      react: 18.2.0 => 18.2.0
      react-dom: ^18.2.0 => 18.2.0
      react-native: 0.72.3 => 0.72.3
      react-native-web: ~0.19.6 => 0.19.7
    npmGlobalPackages:
      eas-cli: 4.1.2
      expo-cli: 6.3.10
    Expo Workflow: managed