Mobile Environment Setup

Overview

Make sure you have all of the following:

Setup

Development Environment

Android Studio

Download and install Android Studio (opens in a new tab). Choose the right version for your operating system.

When Android Studio is installed, open it.

Fig. 1: Android Studio Window

Go to Settings => Appearance & Behaviour => System Settings => Android SDK Check the "Show Package Details" checkbox on the bottom right of the windows.

Fig. 2: Android Studio Settings

Install the latest SDK version. Select the packages shown below and click apply.

Fig. 3: Android Studio SDK Settings

Xcode

To develop an iOS application we have to install Xcode (opens in a new tab) via the Mac App Store.

When the installation is complete, open Xcode then go to Settings => Locations.

Fig. 1: Xcode Settings

Select the most recent version from the "Command Line Tools" dropdown.

Fig. 2: Xcode Location Settings

Finally, install cocoapods by running:

sudo gem install cocoapods

Install Homebrew

Homebrew is a package manager for macOS. When it needs to install software from third-party websites. To install it, run:

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

Install Watchman

React Native uses watchman to detect real-time code changes and it automatically builds and pushes the update to your device without manually refreshing.

brew install watchman

Install Java JRE and JDK

There is a risk of react-native build failure if you don’t have a complete installation of Java. Downloading Android Studio is not enough since it comes bundled with its own JRE.

brew install --cask adoptopenjdk/openjdk/adoptopenjdk8

Install React Native

With React Native, you can write an application in Javascript and then the React Native Compiler will convert your Javascript code into native code for iOS and Android environments. React Native command line interface can be installed using npm as below.

npm install -g react-native-cli