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Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

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Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#11

Post by Rohansi »

no_butterscotch wrote: post #3
purplecats wrote: post #2

i used this for my startup years ago, nice to see its still going strong

Any major issues? I'm considering RN right now. Wondering whether to start from scratch or not. People refer to issues "ejecting" from Expo but those issues are vague and go back years. Any concerns or experiences on your end that make it a good or bad option?

Ejecting is no longer required with EAS (Expo Application Services) build. You can bring in your own native dependencies and still use Expo without ejecting.

I use it for the Rust (video game) companion app, using the stock libraries bundled within Expo so development is a breeze.

https://rust.facepunch.com/companion/

Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#12

Post by Rohansi »

throwanapple wrote: post #8
no_butterscotch wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any major issues? I'm considering RN right now. Wondering whether to start from scratch or not. People refer to issues "ejecting" from Expo but those issues are vague and go back years. Any concerns or experiences on your end that make it a good or bad option?

They like to do a lot of breaking changes between versions that are very painful to upgrade to. But this also applies to RN and JS ecosystem to a lesser extent.

I believe the situation with this has improved. Before EAS you needed to target one of the more recent SDK versions or you wouldn't be able to build using their services. However, if your app is new (or upgraded) enough to use EAS now then you don't get locked out of building anymore.

But still, upgrading SDK versions to stay on top of security/new features can be a burden with how many breaking changes there are.

Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#13

Post by jeppester »

no_butterscotch wrote: post #3
purplecats wrote: post #2

i used this for my startup years ago, nice to see its still going strong

Any major issues? I'm considering RN right now. Wondering whether to start from scratch or not. People refer to issues "ejecting" from Expo but those issues are vague and go back years. Any concerns or experiences on your end that make it a good or bad option?

IMO the best thing about expo is that your native project folders pretty much becomes build artifacts, and so can be left out of your git repo.

That is great because those project folders are usually quite fragile and can easily break over time.

Before "prebuild" was introduced, you had to stick to expo-included native modules to get that advantage, and if you didn't, you had to "eject", which was hardly better than not using expo at all.

With "prebuild" you can use any native module and still have a git repo free of those fragile iOS and Android folders. It is more work setting up those modules, but it's worth it IMO.

Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#14

Post by wesvance »

I've used Expo going on 3 years now, their development team is incredible. There are very few reasons to use base react-native over Expo anymore; They make upgrades to new RN versions easier, can support any custom native libraries, have an awesome build service (EAS), support OTA updates, their docs are great... I could go on and on. If you're a RN dev and haven't tried out Expo in the past year I highly recommend giving it another go - its not the Expo you remember before their custom dev-client days.

Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#15

Post by TDiblik »

Tbh, I liked expo, but since you cannot build locally nowdays (you can eject and build, but that won't work 99% of the time, literally didn't work for me on the hello world example), I kinda just threw it in the "cool, but won't use" bucket for time beeing :/, could change in the future, but I don't know how I feel about 3d party service (EAS) building my app and holding my signing certificates (yet)

Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#16

Post by wesvance »

TDiblik wrote: post #15

Tbh, I liked expo, but since you cannot build locally nowdays (you can eject and build, but that won't work 99% of the time, literally didn't work for me on the hello world example), I kinda just threw it in the "cool, but won't use" bucket for time beeing :/, could change in the future, but I don't know how I feel about 3d party service (EAS) building my app and holding my signing certificates (yet)

You can build locally without ejecting; just throw the --local flag on the end of your eas build command This does what EAS would do, just on your local machine. If you remove the --local flag, it will send it up to EAS to do the build.

eas build --profile develop --platform ios --local

Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#17

Post by gleenn »

I'm a huge Clojure(script) fan, re-frame is an amazing and super elegant/easy development tool. The awesome this is you can use Clojurescript and Expo together. It was one of the absolutely most pleasant development experiences I've had, especially supporting multiple mobile platforms too. I've also done Android dev and used a Ruby + iOS toolchain before, and done a lot of mobile web. Expo + Clojurescript easily brought the most delightful experience. Interacting with their team was also fantastic, very smart and responsive.

Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#18

Post by TDiblik »

wesvance wrote: post #16
TDiblik wrote: post #15

Tbh, I liked expo, but since you cannot build locally nowdays (you can eject and build, but that won't work 99% of the time, literally didn't work for me on the hello world example), I kinda just threw it in the "cool, but won't use" bucket for time beeing :/, could change in the future, but I don't know how I feel about 3d party service (EAS) building my app and holding my signing certificates (yet)

You can build locally without ejecting; just throw the --local flag on the end of your eas build command This does what EAS would do, just on your local machine. If you remove the --local flag, it will send it up to EAS to do the build. eas build --profile develop --platform ios --local

yes, you are right, however, AFAIK you still need to be logged + have it linked to eas project (because it uses eas credentials) + this method is planned to be deprecated soon [?] (I'm 100% sure I read stuff like this when researching it like half a year ago, but cannot find it for the love-of-god atm :D, but I would like to be proved otherwise, because the build step is the only thing I disliked about expo long-term wise)

... now looking more into it, I probably mistook `npm run export` / `expo build` with `eas build --local`. Is this correct?

Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#20

Post by soks86 »

gleenn wrote: post #17

I'm a huge Clojure(script) fan, re-frame is an amazing and super elegant/easy development tool. The awesome this is you can use Clojurescript and Expo together. It was one of the absolutely most pleasant development experiences I've had, especially supporting multiple mobile platforms too. I've also done Android dev and used a Ruby + iOS toolchain before, and done a lot of mobile web. Expo + Clojurescript easily brou…

This is great to hear!

I'm not there yet but totally intended to try putting Clojurescript and Expo together. Too many ideas require apps and Clojure is too great not to take with me yet I wouldn't do apps without Expo.

Exciting! Thanks for sharing!

I'm on re-frame too and that's been a dream.

I just wish I had a better UI lib on the (web) frontend. I went with re-com and it feels a bit half-done, though it's working for all my needs so far, I might just sending PRs if it comes to it.

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