Canceling beta release v0.14

Status Mobile
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Core had been planning to release another full beta version before v1, which would include stickers, onboarding face lift, foundation of account explorer in the wallet, bug fixes, and most notably, a set of notifications to the user about our impending v1 breaking changes.

That plan came to a halt with the “64 bit issue for Android”—essentially, a tough bug that prevented us from releasing another Android beta until it was fixed.

After several weeks of effort by Jakub, Pedro, Eric, Andrey and Vitaliy, we now have a fix in testing with QA. But, the fix still prevents us from releasing another Android beta. We had to upgrade to the latest version of ReactNative, which uses Hermes - and is incompatible with Realm, our favorite database of lore. Removing Realm from all Android builds moving forward (as is, harmoniously, the v1 plan), makes these builds incompatible with past. Hence, no further Android betas.

This is a ‘womp womp’ point for several reasons, but the most pressing is that part of v0.14’s purpose is to notify users of v1 breaking changes. Top line: users must back up seed phrase and/or remove funds from their Status wallet before updating to v1, when it arrives.

We’ll now have to seek alternative methods of sharing this information. Here’s the proposal from Janitors:

  1. Release an update to beta 0.13 for iOS only, containing only the v1 notifications.
  2. Use the blog, Twitter, Status and other channels to share information about the breaking changes in the lead-up to v1.

Any other ideas welcome. @anna @andrey @yenda I’d like your approval in particular to release a v0.13.1 for iOS, with only this notification banner included.

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Tough break, sorry to hear that folks! :frowning:

If I can be of any help in getting the word out about the breaking change, just lmk!

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Hi rachel, not that good news but, indeed, I don’t see other alternatives… I’ll help spreading the message on channels i’m in.

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This are the worst type of bugs, I used to call “This is not a bug, it’s a curse.”. Then I used to spent a lot of time removing things to find out where the “curse” came from, until it disappears out of nothing and things start working as if that bug didn’t existed. :unamused:

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Haha - I like that. I’m going to use that line in the blog update @ricardo3 :laughing:

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So if the Google Play Store doesn’t accept you - maybe f-droid does. As we distribute Beta releases which are directed at a tech savvy audience I wouldn’t consider it a drawback.

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@beccon, @jakubgs is currently investigating the process to submit the app to f-droid here: Research process of publishing to F-Droid · Issue #8512 · status-im/status-mobile · GitHub

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Currently blocked from submitting to F-Droid by our use of Firebase. Hopefully we can get rid of it in the near future.