Guidance for using npm in a node-only CI/CD environment

[DanielFrTB]

I am developing a library using your tool and have a question regarding package manager support. Our CI/CD pipeline is restricted to using only node and npm, and we cannot use yarn.

I understand from the documentation and existing issues that yarn is the recommended package manager. However, due to our infrastructure constraints, we need to find a reliable way to make this work with npm.

Could you please provide guidance or a recommended workflow for using react-native-builder-bob in a CI/CD environment that exclusively uses npm? Is there an official way to configure the project to build successfully with npm?

[satya164]

We don't officially test with npm so I can't give proper instructions, but it essentially boils down to 2 things:

• Change all the scripts, ci workflow etc. to use npm instead of yarn
• The trickier thing is to update the monorepo setup to use npm
  • The generated project uses yarn workspaces - with the example app being one of the workspaces. It should already work with npm.
  • Update the monorepo config for npm - in .yarnrc.yml, we have nmHoistingLimits: workspaces - which disables hoisting dependencies to monorepo root. You will need to find npm equivalent.

Though npm doesn't seem to support disabling hositing in monorepo. So the second part may not be possible. An alternative solution to using npm monorepo is to not use monorepo. You'll need to remove workspaces from package.json at root. This means you'll need to run npm install separately in root and in example folder.

[DanielFrTB]

@satya164 Thanks for your answer!
If I don’t use a monorepo, how should I import the local plugin inside the example app?

[satya164]

The project structure doesn't change. The only thing that changes withoutworkspaces is that you need to manually run npm install in root and example folders.

[DanielFrTB]

@DanielFrTB exampleֿֿ\metro.config should be changed since it has monorepo logic:

    Error: No 'workspaces' field found in the 'package.json' at '/mobile-react-plugin'.
      at withMetroConfig (/node_modules/react-native-monorepo-config/index.js:22:11)

[satya164]

@DanielFrTB I added a workspaces option so you can pass workspaces: ['example'] to the config directly https://github.com/satya164/react-native-monorepo-config/tree/main?tab=readme-ov-file#custom-workspaces