What's an Expo Development Build?

Understand how you can easily add native dependencies with development builds.
Learn more about Expo Custom Development Builds (and try them out!): bit.ly/eveningkid-expo
Follow me on Twitter: / eveningkid
#reactnative #expo #customclients

[@egorbulgakov9175]

So... it`s possible to implement payments with Expo now. Sounds enough game-changin` to me! By the way, so happy you got sponsored by Expo

[@eveningkid]

Thanks a lot Egor for your long time support (4 months already)! :)

[@dudusami89]

Congrats for the sponsorship with Expo!!

[@eveningkid]

Thank you Zeroh, I can't believe it happened!! :)

[@NaveenKumar-oh3sr]

I used expo for my last 4 projects ,it is really amazing

[@HaibertBuilds]

Btw Arnaud.. I have a series idea for you, or a topic for your channel should always cover and what I think all RN developers eventually run into. We already have “can it be done in rn?” For animations… but we don’t have “the most performing way to Implement..(insert feature here)” I know it can be harder than animation but I believe that RN and expo are reaching very mature stages and they are going to be even more popular, this will cause many people to research the best way to achieve performance intense tasks in RN.. and there’s not many videos covering this topic. With the help of expo dev client the sky is the limit now. We can add any performant library and that can the key.

[@Quacky_Batak]

I didn't know that "Expo go came installed with some dependencies". Installing any custom lib sounds like a huge improvement. Btw congrats on getting sponsored by Expo 🌸

[@eveningkid]

Thank you Apoorv, what a journey :)

[@OmerVexler]

Great video, thanks!

[@xavierduchesne5609]

awesome video. keep up the great work :)

[@orlantquijada]

thanks so much! i honestly got so confused reading all about the change logs

[@eveningkid]

Really happy it's helped you Orlan. Thanks for being around :)

[@HWBUK1]

Good job Expo!

[@Orion3000k]

Perfect. Thanks.

[@HaibertBuilds]

We’ll… you made the video.. and expo released this amazing feature. I will now have to lay an egg like promised.

[@eveningkid]

You have no idea how much I laughed to your comment man!!

[@HaibertBuilds]

@@eveningkid that was my goal 😂❤️

[@migom6]

The story telling is amazing, seems like expo is sponsored by you lol. But can you talk about the build size between expo and native (hermes)

[@Baconbrix]

There is no difference in size with EAS Build, it's just a React Native app, but the native code is all generated by Expo tooling.

[@afolabiadegorite4815]

We miss the weekly Friday streams, I know it's not so easy keeping up so take your time, but please be back

[@santiagozapata9056]

Can i use eas to create a custom development client? I just see the build command creates store ready versions of your projects

[@olumidefarominiyi8681]

I want to develop a generic Expo module to display several React Native Apps I have already built on a web browser. They are Native Apps that Runs on the device. So, what we want to build with Expo is an app that can display this on a browser Let's assume it's in a location It's that simple. Is there a way I can go about it?

[@eRaZerrOfficial]

What if the library doesnt provide a plugin?can I modify the native files (Info.plist or build.gradle) manually after running expo run:android and then create a custom dev client with those? Without creating a plugin

[@charlesgoode6058]

I have a few questions about what is strictly meant by "any native library supported by Expo config plugins"? How can we tell whether a native library is compatible with this? In the past when determining whether a react native library was a native library, I would look for the ios/android folders in the repo. Is there a similarly simple way to check? Are most native libraries compatible by default? If not, does it require work done by the Expo team or by the library maintainer?

[@eveningkid]

To my knowledge, if a native dependency can be added using "npm install + pod install", it'll work out of the box. If not, there should be a config plugin for it to allow extra configuration via your app.json. That's why react-native-blur-hash would work right away (npm+pod) and react-native-health wouldn't without a config plugin (changes in .plist etc.). You can check both repos for reference :)

[@cryptoknight7256]

Hey stranger! is it possible to install reanimated 2.30alpha3 in Expo SDK 42? Thanks!

[@oxomist]

Can I use Expo if I want to Integrate an API into my React Native App?

[@privat3stuff]

Great video! I’ve read up on this, but haven’t tried it yet myself. A question remains, how do you install the custom client on IOS devices when built locally (I get that EAS also solves this)? What makes Expo nice is the fact Expo Go is easily accessible on all devices through the app stores. So do local builds require something like Testflight?

[@Baconbrix]

You can build locally onto connected iOS devices with `expo run:ios --device`. To share with other people around the world, you can use TestFlight or AdHoc builds (both require a paid Apple account).

[@privat3stuff]

@@Baconbrix ah thanks for explaining, this kind of sucks for our team as our QA team uses a server to run expo builds off of various branches. They get an IP and connect with the physical test devices to the server. In this case we need to find a fast way (outside of testflight as that process on its own is horrible and time consuming) to distribute our “custom” expo builds to these devices. EAS is a solution, but one that will surely cost us.

[@eveningkid]

You should reach out to them directly! I'm sure there's a way, especially if lacking some native deps is a blocker for you :)

[@roboto9008]

@@privat3stuff the eas build tool has an option in the documentation to build off your own servers ;) It already exists, your problem is solved haha

[@privat3stuff]

@@roboto9008 thanks for the reply, we have actually been using a custom expo client for the past month now and its been a game changer. We are building off our own server automated by github CI. Thanks for taking the time to let me know.

[@selvamani6704]

Why are you having very less subscribers 🙄 .. wish you to get atleast 500k subs.. 👍

[@cryptoknight7256]

Ok, so for Expo users it means that we can now include libraries that are not currently part of Expo?

[@HaibertBuilds]

As long as there’s a plug-in for it. Not sure what that means exactly but I believe that’s the case

[@Baconbrix]

@@HaibertBuilds Only certain packages need a config plugin. react-native-nfc-manager, and react-native-ble-plx need a plugin to configure things like Info.plist and AndroidManifest.xml. Packages like react-native-fast-image, react-native-blurhash, or realm work out of the box, no plugin required.

[@HaibertBuilds]

@@Baconbrix wow. So THATS what config plug-ins are for.. makes so much sense ty! And it’s up to the open source community to create these config plug ins correct ? Meaning the library maintainers as well obviously… also since maybe you’ll actually read this and reply can you please explain how JSI is going to change the RN landscape ? Will react native need to be re written with JSI? Along with every library ?

[@evanbacon9126]

@@HaibertBuilds the JSI infra is backwards compatible, not everything needs to be rewritten. JSI will make intensive things like audio, video, camera, editing, and streaming on par with native performance. Reanimated 2 is a good example of what’s possible with JSI. As for plugins, yes the library authors should maintain plugins inside of their package.

[@HaibertBuilds]

@@evanbacon9126 ty so much for responding and clearing that up 🙏🏻 would it be possible for RN it’s self to be rewritten with JSI? Is that even feasible?

[@ajaykumaryadav6564]

HELP NEEDED.....Brother I learn a lot form you. That's why when I got this problem and unable to solve it even after trying for 4 days so I come over here. Actually I am working on a small project alarm in react-cli, using react-native-push-notificaiton. The app works fine in foreground and background state. But when I close the app then there is no notification. Please HELP me brother , I really need to complete this project. And I already search about it a lot. but none of them working.

[@bapi6060]

Using expo is all that great but the problem is with the app bundle size which currently in my small project gives an apk size of 54mb

[@Barthap10]

You're probably using `expo build` command. Using EAS Build solves that problem

[@hrithiksingh73]

Now if they make the apk size small then expo/react-native will be best

[@Baconbrix]

EAS Build (released in December 2020) fixed this. Instead of building your bundle into a shell app (every package installed by default), we now use `expo prebuild` in the cloud to generate all of the native code for the project. This means we only add code that is present in the project dependencies. The result is; over 10x smaller binary sizes on base iOS projects.

[@evanbacon9126]

@@hrithiksingh73 our entire workflow works with Android as well. Something worth noting is that EAS Build is still in beta, so we haven’t enabled the free tier yet, that will be coming in the next couple months (first month is free regardless though). You can also build the projects locally with the new expo run commands! They’re pretty straightforward on Android, and I’ve added a bunch of features to make iOS as easy as possible. I highly recommend giving it another look soon!

[@hrithiksingh73]

@@evanbacon9126 thanks ! Excited to try 🤩🤩

[@lakshaysagarrana3965]

Dont we need to do prebuild???

[@mudandmoss4132]

hey buddy, just checking up on you to make sure you're not dead. Let us know, k thx bye :)

[@eveningkid]

I’m alive! As long as you are subscribed, I promise you’ll get to see something when it’s ready :)

[@user-fg5np8hf1m]

so you are telling me some packages does not work? Then why do I need this stupid expo? I'll go indirectly into ios or android development. There is pointless.