- 📦 Download and Setup
- ✍️ Editing SDK Packages
- ⏱ Testing Your Changes
- 📚 Updating Documentation
- 📝 Writing a Commit Message
- 🔎 Before Submitting
Thanks for the help! We currently review PRs for packages/, docs/, templates/, guides/, apps/, and markdown files.
We recommend that folks interested in contributing to the SDK use the apps/bare-expo project in their SDK development workflow instead of the Expo client. The Expo client itself (in the android/ and ios/ directories) is difficult to set up and requires API tokens.
The bare-expo project includes most of the Expo SDK and runs the JavaScript code from apps/test-suite to allow you to easily write and run E2E tests for iOS, and Android for any given SDK package. Unit tests can be written within the SDK package itself. When pushed to the remote, CI will run this project with tests for Android/iOS and report the results on your pull request.
Manual smoke tests are included in apps/native-component-list, this is a good fit for demos or tests that require physical interactions. This is particularly useful if you are testing interactions with UI components, or if there is something very difficult to test in an automated way but would be easy to verify through manual interaction.
💡 How does
bare-exporelate totest-suite?
bare-expois a bare workflow app that links all of the Expo SDK dependencies in thepackages/directory in order to be able to run projects in theapps/directory in the bare workflow rather than the Expo client. It currently only runstest-suite.test-suiteis a regular managed workflow Expo app with some custom code to turn it into a test runner. If you runexpo startin thetest-suitedirectory you can load the project in Expo client.bare-expoimports thetest-suiteapp root component and uses it as its own root component.
💽 The development environment for this repository does not support Windows; WSL is required to contribute from Windows.
- If you are an Expo team member, clone the repository. If you are an external contributor, fork this repository to your own GitHub account and then clone it to your local device. (
git remote add upstream git@github.com:expo/expo.git😉). You can usegit clone --depth 1 --single-branch --branch main git@github.com:expo/expo.git, discarding most of the branches and history to clone it faster. - Install direnv. On macOS:
brew install direnv. Don't forget to install the shell hook to your shell profile. - Install git-lfs. On macOS:
brew install git-lfs. - Install Node LTS.
If you plan to contribute to the documentation, run npm run setup:docs.
If you plan to contribute to Android, run npm run setup:native. This command does the following for you:
- Downloads submodules (like
react-native) withgit submodule update --init - Ensures Yarn is installed
- Ensures your computer is set up for React Native (will install the Android NDK if it's not present)
- Downloads the Node packages (
yarn install)
We recommend JDK 17 (eg. zulu17). Run the following commands in a terminal window to install it:
brew tap homebrew/cask-versions
brew install --cask zulu17After you install the JDK, add the JAVA_HOME environment variable in ~/.bash_profile (or ~/.zshrc if you use ZSH):
export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/zulu-17.jdk/Contents/HomeANDROID_SDK_ROOT environmental variable should be set or configured via local.properties file in android folder of the native project you're working with.
If you will be working with the iOS project, ensure ruby 2.7 is installed on your machine. macOS comes with ruby 2.6, which is not supported in this repository; if you use Homebrew you can just run brew install ruby@2.7. You will also need to have the latest stable version of Xcode installed, along with Xcode command line tools.
-
Navigate to the bare sandbox project
cd apps/bare-expo -
Run the project on any native platform:
- iOS:
yarn ios - Android:
yarn android - If you are working on Linux, make sure to set the
TERMINALenvironment variable to your preferred terminal application. (e.g.export TERMINAL="konsole")
- iOS:
-
You are now running the
test-suiteapp via thebare-expoproject. The next section explains how you can begin to make changes to SDK packages.
If this didn't work for you as described, please open an issue.
All Expo SDK packages can be found in the packages/ directory. These packages are automatically linked to the projects in the apps/ directory, so you can edit them in-place and see the changes in the running app.
- Navigate to a package you want to edit. Ex:
cd packages/expo-constants - Start the TypeScript build in watch mode:
yarn build - Edit code in that package's
src/directory - Play with your changes on a simulator or device through
bare-expo:- Add or modify a file named after the API you're working on. Ex:
apps/test-suite/tests/Constants.js - To see native changes, you will need to run the
test-suitewith theapps/bare-expoproject usingyarn <android | ios>. - If you are only making JavaScript changes, you can run
test-suitefrom theapps/test-suiteproject usingexpo start. - To run the full test suite, you can run the tests
yarn test:<android | ios>.
- Add or modify a file named after the API you're working on. Ex:
- You can edit a package's native code directly from its respective folder in the
packages/directory or by openingbare-expoin a native editor:- Navigate to the
bare-expoapp directory:cd apps/bare-expo - Android Studio:
yarn edit:android - Xcode:
yarn edit:ios - Remember to rebuild the native project whenever you make a native change
- Navigate to the
If you don't have something in mind already, the best way to find something to help with is "Issue accepted" label.
Note that we generally do not accept PRs that bump versions of native dependencies. The Expo team handles bumping these dependencies as part of our release process for each Expo SDK. The process for pulling in a new version and adequately requires a fair amount of context on how Expo Go works.
All modules should adhere to the style guides which can be found here:
- Guide to Unimodule Development
- Expo JS Style Guide (also mostly applies to TypeScript)
- Updating Changelogs
- The React Native dev tools are currently disabled in our fork #5602. You can hack around this by cloning React Native outside this repo, then copying the contents
react-native/React/DevSupportintoexpo/react-native-lab/react-native/React/DevSupport(this will only enable the shake gesture, CMD+R won't work yet). - We use a fork of
react-nativein this repo; this fork is located atreact-native-lab/react-native(you can make changes or cherry-picks from here if you want). It diverges the minimal amount necessary from thereact-nativeversion in itspackage.json. - All of the package's
build/code should be committed. This is because it is simpler to reproduce issues if all contributors are running the same code and so we don't need to rebuild dozens of packages locally on everygit pullorgit checkoutoperation. - We use a unified set of basic Bash scripts and configs called
expo-module-scriptsto ensure everything runs smoothly (TypeScript, Babel, Jest, etc...).
You'll need write about how you tested your changes in the PR under the Test Plan section.
The best way to get your changes merged is to build good tests for them! We have three different kinds of tests: unit-tests, automated E2E tests, and demos (adding tests that you notice are missing is a great way to become my friend 🥳)!
- Create a test for your feature in the appropriate package's
src/__tests__directory (if the file doesn't exist already, create it with the*-test.tsor*-test.tsxextension). - Any new bridged native functions have to be added to the jest-expo package to ensure they are mocked. To help you do this more easily, we've written a tool and a guide on how to do this. Check out Generating Jest Mocks!
- Run the test with
yarn testand ensure it handles all platforms (iOS, Android, and web). If the feature doesn't support a platform, then you can exclude it by putting your test in a file with a platform extension like:.test.ios.ts,.test.native.ts,.test.web.ts... - You can also test platforms one at a time by pressing X and selecting the platform you want to test!
- Write your tests in
apps/test-suite/tests- These tests are written with a non-feature-complete version of Jasmine that runs on the Android and iOS clients, so no special features like snapshot testing will be available.
- If you created a new test file, be sure to add it in
apps/test-suite/TestUtils.js. - If the new test file could be running automatically from the
bare-expotesting, add it inapps/bare-expo/e2e/TestSuite-test.native.js.
- Run your tests locally from the
bare-expodirectory withyarn test:android, oryarn test:ios.- It's important you test locally because native CI tests can be fragile, take a while to finish, and be frustrating when they fail.
- Remember to try and get your feature running on as many platforms as possible.
Thanks again for helping to make sure that Expo is stable for everyone!
Our docs are made with Next.js. They're located in the docs directory. For more information look at the docs/README.md.
TL;DR:
- Navigate to the docs directory and run
yarn. - Start the project with
yarn dev(make sure you don't have another server running on port3002). - Navigate to the docs you want to edit:
cd docs/pages/. - If you update an older version, ensure the relevant changes are copied into
docs/pages/versions/unversioned/for API docs.
If this is your first time committing to a large public repo, you could look through this neat tutorial: "How to Write a Git Commit Message"
Commit messages are most useful when formatted like so: [platform][api] Title. For example, if you fix a bug in the package expo-video for iOS, you could write: [ios][video] Fixed black screen bug that appears on older devices.
To help keep CI green, please make sure of the following:
- Remember to add a concise description of any user-facing changes to
CHANGELOG.mdfile in the package you've changed or root's CHANGELOG.md if your changes don't apply to any package. This is especially helpful for breaking changes! - If you modified anything in
packages/:- You transpiled the TypeScript with
yarn buildin the directory of whichever package you modified. - Run
yarn lint --fixto fix the formatting of the code. Ensure thatyarn lintsucceeds without errors or warnings. - Run
yarn testto ensure all existing tests pass for that package, along with any new tests you would've written. - All
console.logs or commented out code blocks are removed!
- You transpiled the TypeScript with
- If you edited the docs directory:
- Any change to the current SDK version should also be in the unversioned copy as well. Example:
- You fixed a typo in
docs/pages/versions/vXX.0.0/sdk/app-auth.md - Ensure you copy that change to:
docs/pages/versions/unversioned/sdk/app-auth.md
- You fixed a typo in
- You don't need to run the docs tests locally. Just ensure the links you include aren't broken, the format is correct, and the changes are following our writing style guide.
- Any change to the current SDK version should also be in the unversioned copy as well. Example:
- Our CI tests will finish early if you don't make changes to certain directories. If you want to get results faster then you should make changes to docs directory in one PR, and changes to anything else in another!