What causes this Android APK Upload error: “Non-upgradable APK”

Question

I have an Android APK in the Google Play store with an Target SDK of 23.

I have released a new version (same target SDK) and Google shows me this error:

If I

Answer 1

I ran into a similar problem but was able to solve it with the following Node script used as part of my continuous deployment pipeline.

Note:

This reads from a VERSION.md file that contains the current app version.

It may also be run with the --version argument to only update the current version in config.xml without setting the build versions.

#!/usr/bin/env node

var fs = require('fs');
var xml2js = require('xml2js');
const cliArgs = require('command-line-args');
const options = cliArgs([
    {name: 'version', type: Boolean}
]); 

// Read config.xml
var xml = fs.readFileSync('config.xml', 'utf8');

// Parse XML to JS Obj
xml2js.parseString(xml, function (err, result) {
    if(err) {
        return console.log(err);
    }

    // Get JS Obj
    var obj = result;
    const version = fs.readFileSync('VERSION.md', 'utf8');

    if (options.version){
        // Write current version
        obj['widget']['$']['version'] = version;
    } else {
        // Increment build numbers (separately for iOS and Android)
        obj['widget']['$']['ios-CFBundleVersion'] = version;
        // remove all periods to create an integer for Android
        const [major, minor, patch] = version.split('.')
        obj['widget']['$']['android-versionCode'] = major+pad_number(minor)+pad_number(patch);
    }

    // Build XML from JS Obj
    var builder = new xml2js.Builder();
    var xml = builder.buildObject(obj);

    // Write config.xml
    fs.writeFile('config.xml', xml, function(err) {
        if(err) {
            return console.log(err);
        }
        
        console.log('Build number successfully incremented');
    });

});

/**
 * Pad a number with prepending zeros if less than 10
 * @see [Javascript function to pad a string](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2686855/is-there-a-javascript-function-that-can-pad-a-string-to-get-to-a-determined-leng)
 */
function pad_number(orig) {
    return ("00"+orig).slice(-2);
}