CreateNewApp.md

Overview

Create project

React native projects creating goes with the help of command line interface (react-native-cli package). react-native-desktop adds a modification to that package to support desktop platform.

Use modified react-native-cli globally

If all the projects you develop need desktop support, you can install modified command line interface globally by following these steps

After that you create a new project:

react-native init DesktopSampleApp
cd DesktopSampleApp

Use modified react-native-cli locally

Alternative and more flexible way is to install original react-native-cli:

npm install -g react-native-cli # Or use Yarn

And create project that uses a react-native-desktop repo:

react-native init DesktopSampleApp --version status-im/react-native-desktop

Since we used original react-native-cli, desktop-related files aren't in project yet. So we should initialize them:

cd DesktopSampleApp
react-native desktop

Run the project

If you're using macOS, run these commands in 2 different shells (from DesktopSampleApp dir):

npm start #starts bundler

node node_modules/react-native/ubuntu-server.js #starts js server

Afterwards, in a 3rd shell execute:

react-native run-desktop

Compilation of desktop project will start. When it finished and app run you can see following:

Note: On non-macOS systems, npm start and node ubuntu-server.js will be executed automatically by the above command

If you want to know why you had to start bundler and js server - check the doc on how react-native-desktop works internally