React Native Test Plan

An experimental way to verify changes to React Native. This project provides a test app that is directly linked to the react-native and react-native-cli projects. This lets you make changes to React Native and see the results immediately.

Disclaimer: This has only been tested on Android

Setting things up

git clone https://github.com/nhunzaker/ReactNativeTestPlan
cd ReactNativeTestPlan
git submodule update --init --recursive

For these instructions, I'll use my Github handle and fork of React Native, but you can replace them with your own:

If you made changes to React Native:

git remote add nhunzaker git@github.com:nhunzaker/react-native.git
git fetch nhunzaker
git checkout nhunzaker/master # or whatever your branch is

If you made changes to react-native-cli:

cd ../react-native-cli
git remote add nhunzaker git@github.com:nhunzaker/react-native-cli.git
git fetch nhunzaker
git checkout nhunzaker/master # or whatever your branch is

Then execute:

yarn install

Setup React Native

This is pretty involved. Please help if you know of a way to make this simpler.

1. Install Buck
2. Open React Native in Android Studio
3. Install the Buck Plugin for Android Studio
4. Make sure that the ADB and Buck paths are set in Settings > Tools > Buck
5. Download Android NDK Version 17 from here
6. Extract the NDK to your computer. I put it under ~/Android/android-ndk-r17c
7. Open local.properties and add: ndk.dir=<ENTER_YOUR_PATH_HERE>/android-ndk-r17c
8. Click Build > Make Project
9. Now open the test app android project (<root>/android)
10. Open local.properties and add: ndk.dir=<ENTER_YOUR_PATH_HERE>/android-ndk-r17c
11. Click Build > Make Project

Then take a deep breath. You did it. Now let's install the rest of the dependencies:

yarn install
yarn build-react-native

This will make a special Android Library file that gets pulled into the test React Native app. You can now run your app:

Run a dev server:

yarn start

Run the app

yarn run-android