react-native/docs/QuickStart-GettingStarted.md

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Platform: iOS Android OS: Mac Linux Windows

Unsupported

Unfortunately, Apple only lets you develop for iOS on a Mac machine. Please check out the Android instructions instead.

Installation

Required Prerequisites

Homebrew

Homebrew, in order to install the required NodeJS, in addition to some recommended installs.

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Node

Use Homebrew to install Node.js.

NodeJS 4.0 or greater is required for React Native. The default Homebrew package for Node is currently 6.0, so that is not an issue.

brew install node

React Native Command Line Tools

The React Native command line tools allow you to easily create and initialize projects, etc.

npm install -g react-native-cli

If you see the error, EACCES: permission denied, please run the command: sudo npm install -g react-native-cli.

Xcode

Xcode 7.0 or higher. Open the App Store or go to https://developer.apple.com/xcode/downloads/. This will also install git as well.

Android Studio

Android Studio 2.0 or higher.

Android Studio requires the Java Development Kit [JDK] 1.8 or higher. You can type javac -version to see what version you have, if any. If you do not meet the JDK requirement, you can download it.

Android Studio will provide you the Android SDK and emulator required to run and test your React Native apps.

Unless otherwise mentioned, keep all the setup defaults intact. For example, the Android Support Repository is installed automatically with Android Studio, and we need that for React Native.

You will need to customize your installation:

• Choose a Custom installation

• Choose both Performance and Android Virtual Device

• After installation, choose Configure | SDK Manager from the Android Studio welcome window.

• In the SDK Platforms window, choose Show Package Details and under Android 6.0 (Marshmallow), make sure that Google APIs, Intel x86 Atom System Image, Intel x86 Atom_64 System Image, and Google APIs Intel x86 Atom_64 System Image are checked.

• In the SDK Tools window, choose Show Package Details and under Android SDK Build Tools, make sure that Android SDK Build-Tools 23.0.1 is selected.

ANDROID_HOME Environment Variable

Ensure the ANDROID_HOME environment variable points to your existing Android SDK. To do that, add this to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile (or whatever your shell uses) and re-open your terminal:

# If you installed the SDK without Android Studio, then it may be something like:
# /usr/local/opt/android-sdk
export ANDROID_HOME=~/Library/Android/sdk

Highly Recommended Installs

Watchman

Watchman is a tool by Facebook for watching changes in the filesystem. It is recommended you install it for better performance.

brew install watchman

Flow

Flow, for static typechecking of your React Native code (when using Flow as part of your codebase).

brew install flow

Add Android Tools Directory to your PATH

You can add the Android tools directory on your PATH in case you need to run any of the Android tools from the command line such as android avd. In your ~/.bash or ~/.bash_profile:

# Your exact string here may be different.
PATH="~/Library/Android/sdk/tools:~/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools:${PATH}"
export PATH

Gradle Daemon

Enable Gradle Daemon which greatly improves incremental build times for changes in java code.

Other Optional Installs

Git

Git version control. If you have installed Xcode, Git is already installed, otherwise run the following:

brew install git

Nuclide

Nuclide is an IDE from Facebook providing a first-class development environment for writing, running and debugging React Native applications.

Get started with Nuclide here.

Genymotion

Genymotion is an alternative to the stock Google emulator that comes with Android Studio. However, it's only free for personal use. If you want to use the stock Google emulator, see below.

1. Download and install Genymotion.
2. Open Genymotion. It might ask you to install VirtualBox unless you already have it.
3. Create a new emulator and start it.
4. To bring up the developer menu press ⌘+M

Troubleshooting

Virtual Device Not Created When Installing Android Studio

There is a known bug on some versions of Android Studio where a virtual device will not be created, even though you selected it in the installation sequence. You may see this at the end of the installation:

Creating Android virtual device
Unable to create a virtual device: Unable to create Android virtual device

If you see this, run android avd and create the virtual device manually.

Then select the new device in the AVD Manager window and click Start....

Shell Command Unresponsive Exception

If you encounter:

Execution failed for task ':app:installDebug'.
  com.android.builder.testing.api.DeviceException: com.android.ddmlib.ShellCommandUnresponsiveException

try downgrading your Gradle version to 1.2.3 in <project-name>/android/build.gradle (https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/2720)

Installation

Required Prerequisites

Chocolatey

Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows similar to yum and apt-get. See the website for updated instructions, but installing from the Terminal should be something like:

@powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin

Normally when you run Chocolatey to install a package, you should run your Terminal as Administrator.

Python 2

Fire up the Termimal and use Chocolatey to install Python 2.

Python 3 will currently not work when initializing a React Native project.

choco install python2

Node

Fire up the Terminal and type the following commands to install NodeJS from the NodeSource repository:

sudo apt-get install -y build-essential
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_4.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node

Fire up the Termimal and use Chocolatey to install NodeJS.

choco install nodejs.install

React Native Command Line Tools

The React Native command line tools allow you to easily create and initialize projects, etc.

npm install -g react-native-cli

If you see the error, EACCES: permission denied, please run the command: sudo npm install -g react-native-cli.

Android Studio

Android Studio 2.0 or higher.

Android Studio requires the Java Development Kit [JDK] 1.8 or higher. You can type javac -version to see what version you have, if any. If you do not meet the JDK requirement, you can download it, or use a pacakage manager to install it (e.g. choco install jdk8, apt-get install default-jdk).

Android Studio will provide you the Android SDK and emulator required to run and test your React Native apps.

Unless otherwise mentioned, keep all the setup defaults intact. For example, the Android Support Repository is installed automatically with Android Studio, and we need that for React Native.

You will need to customize your installation:

• Choose a Custom installation

• Choose Android Virtual Device

• Make sure all components are checked for the install, particularly the Android SDK and Android Device Emulator.

• After the initial install, choose a Custom installation.

• Verify installed components, particularly the emulator and the HAXM accelerator. They should be checked.

• After installation, choose Configure | SDK Manager from the Android Studio welcome window.

• In the SDK Platforms window, choose Show Package Details and under Android 6.0 (Marshmallow), make sure that Google APIs, Intel x86 Atom System Image, Intel x86 Atom_64 System Image, and Google APIs Intel x86 Atom_64 System Image are checked.

• In the SDK Tools window, choose Show Package Details and under Android SDK Build Tools, make sure that Android SDK Build-Tools 23.0.1 is selected.

ANDROID_HOME Environment Variable

Ensure the ANDROID_HOME environment variable points to your existing Android SDK.

To do that, add this to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile (or whatever your shell uses) and re-open your terminal:

# If you installed the SDK without Android Studio, then it may be something like:
# /usr/local/opt/android-sdk; Generally with Android Studio, the SDK is installed here...
export ANDROID_HOME=~/Android/Sdk

You need to restart the Terminal to apply the new environment variables (or source the relevant bash file).

Go to Control Panel -> System and Security -> System -> Change settings -> Advanced System Settings -> Environment variables -> New

Your path to the SDK will vary to the one shown below.

You need to restart the Command Prompt (Windows) to apply the new environment variables.

Highly Recommended Installs

Watchman

Watchman is a tool by Facebook for watching changes in the filesystem. It is recommended you install it for better performance.

This also helps avoid a node file-watching bug.

Type the following into your terminal to compile watchman from source and install it:

git clone https://github.com/facebook/watchman.git
cd watchman
git checkout v4.5.0  # the latest stable release
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install

Flow

Flow, for static typechecking of your React Native code (when using Flow as part of your codebase).

Type the following in the terminal:

npm install -g flow-bin

Gradle Daemon

Enable Gradle Daemon which greatly improves incremental build times for changes in java code.

touch ~/.gradle/gradle.properties && echo "org.gradle.daemon=true" >> ~/.gradle/gradle.properties

(if not exist "%USERPROFILE%/.gradle" mkdir "%USERPROFILE%/.gradle") && (echo org.gradle.daemon=true >> "%USERPROFILE%/.gradle/gradle.properties")

Android Emulator Accelerator

You may have seen the following screen when installing Android Studio.

If your system supports KVM, you should install the Intel Android Emulator Accelerator.

Add Android Tools Directory to your PATH

You can add the Android tools directory on your PATH in case you need to run any of the Android tools from the command line such as android avd.

In your ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile:

# Your exact string here may be different.
PATH="~/Android/Sdk/tools:~/Android/Sdk/platform-tools:${PATH}"
export PATH

Go to Control Panel -> System and Security -> System -> Change settings -> Advanced System Settings -> Environment variables -> highlight PATH -> Edit...

The location of your Android tools directories will vary.

Other Optional Installs

Git

Install Git via your package manager (e.g., sudo apt-get install git-all).

You can use Chocolatey to install git via:

choco install git

Alternatively, you can download and install Git for Windows. During the setup process, choose "Run Git from Windows Command Prompt", which will add git to your PATH environment variable.

Nuclide

[Nuclide] is an IDE from Facebook providing a first-class development environment for writing, running and debugging React Native applications.

Get started with Nuclide here.

Genymotion

Genymotion is an alternative to the stock Google emulator that comes with Android Studio. However, it's only free for personal use. If you want to use the stock Google emulator, see below.

1. Download and install Genymotion.
2. Open Genymotion. It might ask you to install VirtualBox unless you already have it.
3. Create a new emulator and start it.
4. To bring up the developer menu press ⌘+M

Visual Studio Emulator for Android

The Visual Studio Emulator for Android is a free android emulator that is hardware accelerated via Hyper-V. It is an alternative to the stock Google emulator that comes with Android Studio. It doesn't require you to install Visual Studio at all.

To use it with react-native you just have to add a key and value to your registry:

1. Open the Run Command (Windows+R)
2. Enter regedit.exe
3. In the Registry Editor navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Android SDK Tools
4. Right Click on Android SDK Tools and choose New > String Value
5. Set the name to Path
6. Double Click the new Path Key and set the value to C:\Program Files\Android\sdk. The path value might be different on your machine.

You will also need to run the command adb reverse tcp:8081 tcp:8081 with this emulator.

Then restart the emulator and when it runs you can just do react-native run-android as usual.

Troubleshooting

Unable to run mksdcard SDK Tool

When installing Android Studio, if you get the error:

Unable to run mksdcard SDK tool

then install the standard C++ library:

sudo apt-get install lib32stdc++6

Virtual Device Not Created When Installing Android Studio

There is a known bug on some versions of Android Studio where a virtual device will not be created, even though you selected it in the installation sequence. You may see this at the end of the installation:

Creating Android virtual device
Unable to create a virtual device: Unable to create Android virtual device

If you see this, run android avd and create the virtual device manually.

Then select the new device in the AVD Manager window and click Start....

Shell Command Unresponsive Exception

In case you encounter

Execution failed for task ':app:installDebug'.
  com.android.builder.testing.api.DeviceException: com.android.ddmlib.ShellCommandUnresponsiveException

try downgrading your Gradle version to 1.2.3 in <project-name>/android/build.gradle (https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/2720)

Testing Installation

react-native init AwesomeProject
cd AwesomeProject
react-native run-ios

You can also open the AwesomeProject folder in Nuclide and run the application, or open ios/AwesomeProject.xcodeproj and hit the Run button in Xcode.

react-native init AwesomeProject
cd AwesomeProject
react-native run-android

You can also open the AwesomeProject folder in Nuclide and run the application.

Modifying Project

Now that you successfully started the project, let's modify it:

• Open index.ios.js in your text editor of choice (e.g. Nuclide) and edit some lines.
• Hit ⌘-R in your iOS simulator to reload the app and see your change!

• Open index.android.js in your text editor of choice (e.g. Nuclide) and edit some lines.
• Press the R key twice OR open the menu (F2 by default, or ⌘-M in Genymotion) and select Reload JS to see your change!
• Run adb logcat *:S ReactNative:V ReactNativeJS:V in a terminal to see your app's logs

That's It

Congratulations! You've successfully run and modified your first React Native app.

Testing Installation

react-native init AwesomeProject
cd AwesomeProject
react-native run-android

Troubleshooting Run

A common issue is that the packager is not started automatically when you run react-native run-android. You can start it manually using:

cd AwesomeProject
react-native start

Or if you hit a ERROR Watcher took too long to load on Windows, try increasing the timeout in this file (under your node_modules/react-native/).

Modifying Project

Now that you successfully started the project, let's modify it:

• Open index.android.js in your text editor of choice (e.g. Nuclide) and edit some lines.
• Press the R key twice OR open the menu (F2 by default, or ctrl-M in the emulator) and select Reload JS to see your change!
• Run adb logcat *:S ReactNative:V ReactNativeJS:V in a terminal to see your app's logs

That's It

Congratulations! You've successfully run and modified your first React Native app.

Common Followups

• If you want to run on a physical device, see the Running on iOS Device page.

• If you want to run on a physical device, see the Running on Android Device page.

• If you run into any issues getting started, see the Troubleshooting page.

Common Followups

• If you want to run on a physical device, see the Running on Android Device page.

• If you run into any issues getting started, see the Troubleshooting page.