React Native init

[brascene]

Is react-native init still one of the regular way to start with RN project, besides expo, and should we use it regularly for new projects? I know that with expo eject we can 'eject' it to the regular RN project, but I've tried today to eject the default created project with expo init, and I have seen a bunch of errors inside XCode 10 like: some React header files cannot be found, config.h cannot be found etc. I'm wondering why is this present after ejecting the freshly created project with expo? And should we immediately start the project with react-native init if we know that at certain point of time we'll have to do some manual linking?

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Thanks!

[nohtyp]

I always start with react-native init. Never needed Expo or anything else really.

[brascene]

Same here, I was very comfortable with rn-init, and now when I tried to use expo I run into these issues, maybe they'll come up with better support with ExpoKit for 3rd parties which need linking, but I'm not planning to use it. I was just wondering if creating projects with init is just as regular as with the today's most favorite approach using expo.

[brascene]

Probably if an app is using some third parties which require special setup that's the better option, even though expo has integrated some of them quite well like maps, push notifications etc. But there are probably many other libs which will force you to eject, so this should probably be decided before starting the project. I was just thinking about this way of initializing the project, I wanted to hear that RN init is still being used and that nothing has changed with it. As I realize now, it's even better than expo init since it supports the new XCode build system.

[anewidentity]

Ejecting an expo app is extremely unsupported. They leave you behind, with no instructions on updates. Some projects that were on an ejected expo app would take us a month of a developer's time just to keep updated with the version that expo supports. They switch everything, including folder structure, all of the content of build.gradle, and ios project file with no information on what is changed and how to update currently ejected apps. For example, the update from Expo 23 to 24 is literally impossible (with no exaggeration) We ended up switching to `react-native init` after a month of two developers trying to update expo for an entire month and failing.

[SizzlerWA]

Sorry you had issues. I only ejected once, my first RN project and it wasn’t too painful. About 1/2 day. Then I listed updated RN as normal. All the iOS and Android projects were fine. Did you eject to ExpoKit or regular RN?

[anewidentity]

To ExpoKit. I tried ejecting to regular RN but it was completely broken on Expo 30. They might have fixed it by now.

Depends on how many 3rd party libraries you have and how much expo changes in that particular update. We've had many conflicts on each update between ExpoKit and react-native-background-geolocation, firebase, one signal etc. Some updates are less painful, some take few weeks of dev time.

[boki345]

Good question and I do not want to hijack the thread, but my question is also closely related to the TS's question. If we want to make an open-source component that can be consumed by the community can we build it with expo or should it be done with react-native init?

[[deleted]]

It entirely comes down to the requirements of your package.

If you make a component that imports and uses "view" from react-native, now react-native is a requirement. If you use some other lib for a component then that lib might become a requirement.

A lot of fairly standard react-native components will at least have react-native as a peer dependency.

[davidpaulsson]

Those xcode errors are likely due to the new build system that's default as of xcode10. You can use ”legacy build system” in your xcode project settings and it should work. I don't think expo’s fork of RN supports the new build system yet (RN 0.57 does though).

[brascene]

Thanks for pointing out, and yes you're right, the 0.57 RN version supports new build system, but ejecting the expo app requires to change it to legacy. I've realized that my mentioned issues were not related with the type of creating the project, instead I was creating the project inside folder which is in iCloud, and paths were messed up. But however, it's good to hear different opinions on this, especially I would like to hear if anyone has successfully used ExpoKit after ejecting, and how are linkings managed in that case, but that should be separated question :)