Research how to ship React Native App to Android and iOS devices

[AmasiaNalbandian]

What would you like to be added:
We want research on how we can get this on a mobile phone, both ios and android, and then we want to be able to have this shipped so by the end of 2.6 we can view the basic app on a phone.

Why would you like this to be added:

[LuigiZaccagnini]

Once you have Expo installed, you can use npm start to start a build for your app. Once it is built, it will provide a local QR code that you can scan with the Expo app that will download your app. Since the build is on their server, you can use Android or IOS to scan the QR code and test your app. This is a part of the regular workflow of Expo so it is relatively easy to get going. Also in the Expo Docs you can publish the app to a CDN so everyone can start accessing the app through the expo app but it would not be the same as publishing it one of the app stores.

When we are ready to ship this to the Apple App Store or Google Play Store is when things get a little more time consuming. Getting the Google Play Store app account isn't that difficult, the Apple developer account might be a little more time consuming and we will probably need @humphd to help us fill in information. We also need money to open these accounts from what I remember Apple Developer account costs $100.00/yearly and Google Play Store developer fee is $25 forever.

[humphd]

OK, great, so we can use the Expo App to begin with, and document the process for our users to get the app on their devices.

In later releases we can explore a proper install via the app store, once the app is worthy of publishing :)

[Kevan-Y]

Done some research about shipping our app,

Due to some Apple restrictions, we cannot open the expo link directly, we have to use Apple TestFlight.
On Android, there is no issue. We can open the app with the expo link.
Blog from expo dev

To deploy:
First, we need to set up an Expo dev account link
We have 2 options to ship it:

Automated through CI:
See CI sample, https://docs.expo.dev/guides/setting-up-continuous-integration/#deploy-to-expo

Manual deploy:

npx expo login -u <EXPO USERNAME> -p <EXPO PASSWORD>
npx expo publish --non-interactive

[AmasiaNalbandian]

@Kevan-Y Thank you! I think we said we will ship to android as it's less complicated first. We can look into Apple later correct?

[humphd]

Shipping to Android now, and iOS later is a fine choice, and a great example of my challenge for this week: more, smaller PRs. If you can solve this in 2 PRs, and get half of it landed in 2.7, or all of it solved in 1 PR and none of it landed in 2.7, which do think is better for us?

[AmasiaNalbandian]

I saw Diana put up a PR for the UI library, I think we can work on trying to put this up for 2.7 now. We will have 1 full day and that should be enough! :)