Today I learned about Expo, a toolkit/SDK for React Native development.
Expo makes it easy to bootstrap a React Native code-base without having to install Android Studio or other tool-chains.
Node.js and npm (or yarn) are the only requirements.
Install via npm install expo-cli --global.
Create a new project:
expo init myProject && cd myProject
expo start
This will open up a browser window (“Expo Client”). Here you can open a new emulator, even a web emulator.
That means that you don’t have to install the Android SDK!
Expo is quite limited, and it looks like for most production-ready apps it’s not the right fit: Expo vs Vanilla React Native: What to Choose for Your Project.