New Environment Setup

You must be able to run both Android and iOS emulators

Emulators are resource intensive, and depending on your personal machines, you’ll have varying degrees of experience. Since you don’t likely have access to a Mac machine at home, it is your responsibility to set up these emulators on the lab machines so that you can always test your apps on both platforms.

The following steps will guide you through setting up your development environment for React Native using Expo on the lab machines. You’ll have to repeat these steps at home, modifying them as necessary for your own machine.

1. Enable admin on top right using “jamf connect”.

   Request Admin

   Any time you need admin privileges on the lab Macs, click on the “jamf connect” icon in the top right tool bar and request access for 5 minutes. Do this as many times as needed during the setup process.

2. Install Homebrew. Open the terminal, run the following command, and follow the steps to add it to the path.

   /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

3. Install Bun.

   macOS/Linux

   curl -fsSL https://bun.com/install | bash

   Windows

   powershell -c "irm bun.sh/install.ps1|iex"

   Why Bun over NPM (Node Package Manager)?

   

4. Configure both Android and iOS emulators.

   1. Android with Expo Go: Open this in a new tab and make sure to refer back to the following instructions as you’re going through the setup:
      • Ignore step 1 since Android Studio is already installed.
      • For steps 3-5 under “Set up Android Studio”, make sure “show package details” checkbox on the lower right is selected.
      • For steps 6 and 7 under “Set up Android Studio”, use ~/.zshrc.
      • For step 3 under “Set up an emulator”, choose Pixel 9.
   2. iOS with Expo Go: Open this in a new tab and make sure to refer back to the following instructions as you’re going through the setup:
      • Ignore step 1 since Xcode is already installed.
      • Once you open Xcode, uncheck the AI completion model, and check the iOS option.
      • At the end, run this command in the terminal to ensure the correct Xcode path is set:

        sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

5. (Optional, but recommended) Install Expo Go on your own device.

   Android

   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=host.exp.exponent&referrer=docs

   iOS

   https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id982107779

6. Create a new Expo app using Bun in the parent of the directory you want to work in since the installer will create a new directory for you. For example if you want to work in ~/projects/my-app, run the command in ~/projects.

   bunx create-expo-app@latest

7. Open the newly created project in VS Code and install the Expo Tools extension.

8. Start Expo. I recommend running this inside the VS Code terminal so you can see any errors that pop up while developing.

   bun run start

   Once it’s running, hit i (in the same terminal) to open on iOS - it might take a minute to initialize on the first run so be patient. Then, hit a to open on Android and ensure both emulators are running.

9. Quit Android Studio and Xcode (the applications, not the emulators) to free up resources once both emulators are running. Now that everything is set up, you should not have to open them again. You’ll simply start the emulators from the terminal using bun run start in the project directory of whatever you’re working on.

10. On Moodle, submit a screenshot of both emulators running Expo Go alongside VS Code to Exercise 0.0.0.