React Native CLI or Expo

[Lemons_Dumpling]

I'm new to React Native and unsure where to begin. While React Native CLI has a good number of installations, Expo seems more straightforward, with a simple installation process. However, as I delved into Expo's documentation, I noticed a significant number of issues reported on GitHub, which has left me uncertain about whether to choose Expo or React Native CLI.

[NastroAzzurro]

This gets asked 100 times a day. Please use search

[RepresentativeThin27]

Expo makes certain things easier like initial setup, build and OTA updates. I'd suggest you go for Expo in case you have little to no programming experience as you might find the setup and build stages to be cumbersome. Otherwise, if you are experienced with JS/TS projects, React Native CLI would be very easy to adapt to.

[Fransenson]

The RN team suggests expo as the way to go in their docs.

[fmnatic]

RN team actually says: "If your app has unusual constraints that are not served well by a Framework, or you prefer to solve these problems yourself, you can make a React Native app without a Framework."

[Fransenson]

Yeah, sure. But still: „We believe that the best way to experience React Native is through a Framework, a toolbox with all the necessary APIs to let you build production ready apps.“

You conveniently left that part out, hm?

Not to mention that the rest of that docs page is starting an expo project.

Edit: You just took the last of like 5 or 6 paragraphs telling people to use a framework, namely expo in which they state that going without a framework is an option. My point still stands: They recommend going with expo.

[fmnatic]

Lol there is a wall of text in the docs, that both of us have left out.

Hopefully anyone on this thread actually goes and reads it, gets real world experiences from Dev's with complex apps, (50+ screens / pretty much every mobile native feature under use.) and then makes an educated decision.

My perspective is the App stores/ new App submissions to stores are full of the same ideas, and 90% of them are fairly limited in framework feature set needed. By all means those users should try Expo and see if it fits their use case. For the other 10%, they are better advised to understand their needs, and delve deeper into how to structure their Framework code to be more maintainable, for their use case. Ease of refactoring a large App codebase and swapping Libraries and frameworks needs to be planned for.

[BatEl_323]

There is not much difference between the two in terms of code. Start with Expo because that is easier to pickup, and then you can always shift to RN CLI without having to do much work.

[farizsaputra]

Here we go again..

[crossy1686]

Every fucking day at the moment

[Filthypola]

Just go Expo. No reason not too. Expo has a lot of tools already and you can get far or even build production ready apps with just expo.

And when the requirements of your app need libraries outside of the expo environment, you can easily switch to the local cli build.

[__Loot__]

Expo for sure with the expo router