New nodes built with KNIME SDK 3.3.1(neon 4.6.1) wont work in KNIME upgraded from 3.1 to 3.3 but works fine with fresh KNIME 3.3

Node Development
1

Hi,
Is it possible that new nodes built using KNIME sdk 3.3 might not work in KNIME 3.3.1 which was upgraded from KNIME 3.1.1 but works fine in KNIME 3.3.1 freshly downloaded from website?

I had to make a few changes to existing custom node, used sdk 3.3 for this,

Built the project with maven and installe in 2 environments of KNIME.
1) 3.3.1 which was upgraded from 3.1.1 version. In this the nodes to which I made the changes were not visible in node repository, however all other custom nodes(which were not changed)  within the same project were available.

2) 3.3.1 downloaded freshly from KNIME website, no issues here.

I noticed we have used JAVA 1.8 in 3.3 but previous ones support JAVA 1.7? Can this also be the reason?

And can anyone comment on how the exact same thing works with KNIME server 4.4 an previous versions?

Thanks

2

Ideally an updated KNIME Analytics Platform 3.3.1 is identical to a freshly extracted archive. Practically there may be differences, although we haven't heard of the problems you are describing. Did you check the log files (KNIME & Eclipse)? How are your installing the nodes? I very much hope you are using features and the official installation procedure. If you are using the deprecated dropins folder first change your installation to features and then try again.

KNIME 3.x support extension that are developed with both Java 7 or Java 8.

3

Yes we are using features to install. No idea what dropin folder is. What I do is go to help>install new softwares>local and provide the zip file that was built using MAVEN.

 

Another observation that I would like to point out. When I uninstall any existing custom node, its corresponding features jar files get deleted from features folder. But the corresponding plugin jars still remain in Plugins folder. Is this normal?

4

Yes, this is normal. It will be garbage collected some time later.

5

Thank you very much Thor,

This pointed me in the right direction. Apparently the old plugins were still present when I was installing the updated nodes. Since my plugin names had not changed after the upgrade it was not being installed.
So upon rebuilding my project after git commit, which changed the time stamps on plugins, upgraded nodes were installed.