React Native CLI

Command line tools that ship with react-native in form of the @react-native-community/cli package.

It exposes react-native binary, so you can call yarn react-native or npx react-native directly from your project.

Note: CLI has been extracted from core react-native as a part of "Lean Core" effort. Please read this blog post for more details.

Contents

• Compatibility
• Documentation
• About
• Creating a new React Native project
  • Using npx (recommended)
• Usage in an existing React Native project
• Updating the CLI
• Contributing
• Maintainers
• License

Compatibility

Our release cycle is independent of react-native. We follow semver and here is the compatibility table:

@react-native-community/cli	react-native
^5.0.0 (next)	master
^4.0.0 (master)	^0.62.0
^3.0.0	^0.61.0
^2.0.0	^0.60.0
^1.0.0	^0.59.0

Documentation

• configuration
• commands
• plugins
• init
• autolinking

About

This repository contains tools and helpers for React Native projects in form of a command line tool. There's been quite some confusion around that since the extraction from React Native core. Let's clear them up:

• There are currently two CLIs:
  • @react-native-community/cli – the one used directly by react-native. That makes it a transitive dependency of your project.
  • react-native-cli – an optional global convenience package, which is a proxy to @react-native-community/cli and global installation helper. Please consider it legacy, because it's not necessary anymore.
• When we say "the CLI" we mean @react-native-community/cli.
• We update the CLI independently of React Native itself. Please see how to use the latest version.
• This is a monorepo to keep stuff organized.

We're actively working to make any indirections gone.

Creating a new React Native project

There are two ways to start a React Native project.

Using npx (recommended)

Available since react-native@0.60

This method is preferred if you don't want to install global packages.

npx react-native init MyApp

Usage in an existing React Native project

Once you're inside an existing project, a local react-native binary will be available for you to use. Feel free to use Yarn to call it directly.

Example running start command in terminal:

yarn react-native start
# or:
npx react-native start
# or
node ./node_modules/.bin/react-native start

You can also add npm scripts to call it with whichever package manager you use:

{
  "scripts": {
    "start": "react-native start"
  }
}

Updating the CLI

React Native CLI is a dependency of react-native, which makes it a transitive dependency of your project. It happens that you may be locked on a version without fixes for bugs that may affect you. Here's how to get it sorted:

1. If you use lock files (yarn.lock or package-lock.json) - find all the @react-native-community/cli prefixed entries, remove them, run yarn install / npm install once again. Here's an example using yarn.lock. Notice how whole @react-native-community/cli entries are removed. Make sure to delete all of them:

   diff --git a/yarn.lock b/yarn.lock
   index 073309f..0bb8c4b 100644
   --- a/yarn.lock
   +++ b/yarn.lock
   @@ -843,26 +843,6 @@
        "@types/istanbul-reports" "^1.1.1"
        "@types/yargs" "^13.0.0"
   
   -"@react-native-community/cli-debugger-ui@^3.0.0":
   -  version "3.0.0"
   -  resolved "https://registry.yarnpkg.com/@react-native-community/cli-debugger-ui/-/cli-debugger-ui-3.0.0.tgz#d01d08d1e5ddc1633d82c7d84d48fff07bd39416"
   -  integrity sha512-m3X+iWLsK/H7/b7PpbNO33eQayR/+M26la4ZbYe1KRke5Umg4PIWsvg21O8Tw4uJcY8LA5hsP+rBi/syBkBf0g==
   -  dependencies:
   -    serve-static "^1.13.1"
   -
   -"@react-native-community/cli-platform-android@^3.0.0":
   -  version "3.1.2"
   -  resolved "https://registry.yarnpkg.com/@react-native-community/cli-platform-android/-/cli-platform-android-3.1.2.tgz#313644fba81b5d673cc803009e1eddc930b9618c"
   -  integrity sha512-H30a00LLigsTh4eO0kc2YtaIkOJKrValWOU6n2VES3ZGS31qDx9GhZIwMCMcdzcSnypAyMAfauVatEmBSQZU7Q==
   -  dependencies:
   -    "@react-native-community/cli-tools" "^3.0.0"
   -    chalk "^2.4.2"

2. If you don't use lock files – remove node_modules and run yarn install / npm install again.

3. Run yarn list --pattern @react-native-community/cli or npm list @react-native-community/cli and verify you're on the latest version.

After performing these steps you should be on the latest CLI version. Feel free to do it once in a while, because we release often.

Maintainers

• Michał Pierzchała (@thymikee) - Callstack
• Mike Grabowski (@grabbou) - Callstack
• Kacper Wiszczuk (@esemesek)

License

Everything inside this repository is MIT licensed.