Detaching from Expo without pain

3
votes

We are building an Expo / React Native app and we need to detach to add Intercom native library. We really like the workflow we currently have with Expo / Expo client and are a bit frightened to detach.

Let's imagine we are a team of 3 developers:

  • 1 has some native mobile knowledge
  • 1 is a good react/redux developer, mostly managing app state and architecture
  • 1 is a "react native integrator", mostly handling styles and render functions

Is it possible that only the developer with native knowledge manages the ejected app (like, on another git branch?), and that the 2 other developers keep the same productivity that we have with Expo client?

Is it possible to deploy Expo JS updates (not through stores) without having XCode or Android Studio setup locally?

Is there any way to make sure that our "react native integrator" does not have to install XCode / Android Studio / RN just to be able to change some colors and font sizes of the app?

1
reactjsreact-nativeexpo
for those interested, I have found a solution: expo.canny.io/feature-requests/p/… - Sebastien Lorber

1 Answers

2
votes

Is it possible to deploy Expo JS updates (not through stores) without having XCode or Android Studio setup locally?

Expo is really cool because even after you detach you can still do exp publish and then your native app will read from that new bundle on Expo.

This is like CodePush but built in! Dev 2, and dev 3 can continue to build an Expo app without ever touching native code. Meanwhile dev 1 can implement native modules for them to use... 😁

Side Note

You may also be prime candidates for Expo release channels, made by the talented Quin Jung!

Here is a quote from the doc: "Consider a situation where you have a Staging stack for testing on Expo Client, and a Production stack for pushing through TestFlight, then promoting to the AppStore..."