Broken after update

Some users report that upon upgrading to the latest version, Vitals stops working. Looking at /var/log/syslog (or if your system uses systemd, run sudo journalctl /usr/bin/gnome-shell -f You will see "Error: A different version was loaded previously. You need to log out for changes to take effect." This error impacts all extensions, not just Vitals.

This is caused by users who update extensions via the extensions.gnome.org website. Gnome prefers that you let extension updates happen automatically via the gnome-shell itself. The new version is then loaded on your next session. For users not running Wayland, you can press Alt-F2, type r then press Enter. If you are running Wayland, you will have to log out and log back in.

Official Gnome Response

Yes, that's because of a gnome-shell change in 3.36:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/merge_requests/1248

Note that updates only seemed to work in previous versions. Quoting from the relevant commit message:

Spidermonkey caches imports, which means that uninstalling an old extension version and installing a new one doesn't work as expected: If the previous version was loaded, then its code will be imported instead.

That is, live updates change the code on disk, but users were unknowingly running the old version until logging out.

The recommendation for users is to not update extensions via the website, but instead rely on a different 3.36 change: Built-in extension updates in gnome-shell (which are downloaded and prepared at runtime, but only applied on the next login).

Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do to prevent this.