Using Symlinked Node libraries with React Native 0.55

I recently updated the React Native app I have been working on for a while from RN 0.47 to 0.55. I’ll admit I was a bit callous about the update and hadn’t really looked at the change log, but hey, version control does give one a foolish sense of bravado.

Anyway, needless to say there were issues. As of RN 0.55.4, the `setJSMainModuleName` has been renamed to `setJSMainModulePath` and it took me a bit of sleuthing to figure that out (Find the Github commit here)

However a bigger issue came up when I tried to package the app after resolving the compile errors.

Turns out the new Metro packager cannot follow symlinks, like those created by npm-link

This was a total fail for me, since my app uses local npm modules to hold pieces of common code for the web and mobile clients.

Thankfully someone did come up with a bit of a hack that generates absolute paths for all symlinked libraries and launches the cli.js file of the packager with a config file with the list of absolute paths.

It works for now, but hopefully this bug will get fixed soon.

Author: Arpit Mathur

Arpit Mathur is a Principal Engineer at Comcast Labs where he is currently working on a variety of topics including Machine Learning, Affective Computing, and Blockchain applications. Arpit has also worked extensively on Android and iOS applications, Virtual Reality apps as well as with web technologies like JavaScript, HTML and Ruby on Rails. He also spent a couple of years in the User Experience team as a Creative Technologist. View all posts by Arpit Mathur