addressable how to make new player build use older asset bundles

Questions & Answers
1

Hey there

I am using addressables to load different content from the server.

we deploy new apk builds to the store quite often but the build size is almost the same since the real content is on the server.

I am using player version override for these apk builds. and increment it for each release. I want to be able to use assetbundles generated for older versions on the new builds since they don’t change after they are stable. And i don’t want the user to have to download those content when updating his apk build since they are still cached on his device.

The problem I am having is that addressables system either creates new builds and generates new asset bundles for the old content or if I use Update a previous build it doesn’t update the version number.

i have tried solving this problem by manually changing the assetbundle adrress in the catalog for those content so if level-A_ hash1 is for player version 1 and level-A_hash2 is for player version 2 i would open catalog_2.json and replace all instances of level-A_hash2 with level-A_hash1. but unfortunately after downloading level-A inside build version 1 and updating to build version 2 i am forced to download level-A again.

This was very surprising since i didn’t even upload level-A_hash2 on to the server.
now what is more surprising is that when i checked the UnityCache/Shared/level-A_hash1 I found 2 folders level-A_hash1 and level-A_hash2. with some testing i can confirm that level-A_hash1 was downloaded via build version 1 and the latter via the next, and both are located in a folder named level-A_hash1 :|. So updating the catalog on server has allowed build version 2 to download level-A_hash1 and save it as level-A_hash2 while ignoring the level-A_hash1 already on the device

update: on opening the apk archive, i found a catalog.json file i used a package editor to edit the file and re-signed the apk. unfortunatly the result of my test was the same as before.

i realy cant understand where this reference to hash2 is hidden

sorry for all the names and numbers. i hope my problem is understandable.

would be very thankful for any input.

p.s. : Why cant I post to the forums? it says I don’t have permission.
p.s.2: There is no addressable topic to choose from when posting a question.

2

Ok so debugging the addressable package codes, I was able to find where hash2 was being used and replaced it with hash1 and was able to use the older bundles for newer builds

But i encountered another problem after that. the scenes from the older bundles are cashed and loaded correctly. but since i used duplicate reference analyze rule to decrease the bundle sizes, with the new build the older bundles seem to have lost there correct mapping to those duplicate isolation assets and they aren’t loaded. is there anyway to make the addressable system build the same way everyime?