Unable to deploy add-in updates (ArcGIS Explorer build 2500)

Question

I'm having trouble deploying updates for an add-in developed for AGX Desktop (build 2500).

The initial deployment is fine. If I copy my addin.eaz file to the ‘C:\Users[user]\AppData\Roaming\esri\arcgis explorer\Addins' folder, then start AGX, it works as expected.

Replacing the original add-in with an updated version doesn't seem to work as the described in the documentation:

When a new add-in file is found in this location by ArcGIS Explorer, it will unpack the contents of the file into a cache. ArcGIS Explorer will check if any add-ins have been updated in this location on startup, and if necessary unpack the updated files so that the latest version is used.

If I just overwrite the original .eaz file with an updated version, then start AGX, the new version is ignored.

Confusingly, if I rebuild the project in Visual Studio then start AGX, it works fine. The build information in Visual Studio shows that the new .eaz file was copied to the AddIns folder mentioned above. Why this works after a build and not when I manually copy the .eaz file is a mystery (on a different machine).

The only way I can get this to work is to manually remove the add-in within AGX, then start and stop AGX, then copy the updated .eaz into the AddIns folder, then start AGX again.

Does anyone know of any restrictions when deploying updates, or have I missed something?

Thanks, Glenn

Answer 1

The solution is to use a different filename. So instead of using 'addin.eaz' for updates, I included the date into the filename, i.e. addin_20131714.eaz' for v1.1 etc.

I needed to make sure old .eaz files were deleted from the Addins folder before deploying the update.