Autolinking

search

Searching is the first phase of resolving the Expo modules installed in a project. Its implementation is shared between all platforms. It finds all modules marked as Expo modules and determines which version is of the highest precedence (in case of duplicates).

The above command returns an object in JSON format with modules that have been found as dependencies:

{
  "expo-random": {
    "path": "/absolute/path/to/node_modules/expo-random",
    "version": "13.0.0",
    "config": {
      // Contents of `expo-module.config.json`
      "platforms": ["ios", "android"],
      "ios": { "modules": ["RandomModule"] },
      "android": { "modules": ["expo.modules.random.RandomModule"] }
    },
    "duplicates": [] // An array of other revisions (with lower precedence) of the same module
  }
  // more modules...
}

resolve

Resolving is the second phase based on the results from the search command. It resolves each search result to an object with more (platform-specific) details, such as the path to the podspec or build.gradle files and module classes to link.

For example, with the --platform apple option it returns an object in JSON format with an array of modules and resolved details for the platform:

{
  "modules": [
    {
      "packageName": "expo-random",
      "packageVersion": "13.0.0",
      "pods": [
        {
          "podName": "ExpoRandom",
          "podspecDir": "/absolute/path/to/node_modules/expo-random/ios"
        }
      ],
      "swiftModuleNames": ["ExpoRandom"],
      "modules": ["RandomModule"],
      "appDelegateSubscribers": [],
      "reactDelegateHandlers": [],
      "debugOnly": false
    }
    // more modules...
  ]
}

verify

Verifies the search results by checking whether there are no duplicate packages, otherwise an appropriate warning is shown.

searchPaths

A list of paths relative to the app's root directory where the autolinking script should search for Expo modules. It defaults to a list of all node_modules folders found when traversing up through a monorepo, starting from the app's root directory. Useful when your project has a custom structure or you want to link local packages from folders different than node_modules.

{
  "expo": {
    "autolinking": {
      "searchPaths": ["../../packages"]
    }
  }
}

When used with the CLI, you can pass the search paths as command arguments like this:

exclude

A list of package names to exclude from autolinking. These packages will not be autolinked even if they are found in the search paths. For example, you may want not to link some packages that you don't use on the specific platform to reduce the binary size. The following config in package.json will exclude expo-random from autolinking on Android:

{
  "expo": {
    "autolinking": {
      "android": {
        "exclude": ["expo-random"]
      }
    }
  }
}

Note that the exclude option is for excluding the autolinking of Expo packages. To exclude the autolinking for any other packages, create react-native.config.js at the root directory of your project and apply the configuration as shown in the example below:

module.exports = {
  dependencies: {
    'library-name': {
      platforms: {
        android: null,
      },
    },
  },
};

flags

CocoaPods flags to pass to each autolinked pod. inhibit_warnings is likely the only flag most developers want to use, to inhibit Xcode warnings produced when compiling the autolinked modules. You can refer to the CocoaPods Podfile documentation for available flags.

use_expo_modules!({
  flags: {
    :inhibit_warnings => false
  }
})

{
  "expo": {
    "autolinking": {
      "ios": {
        "flags": {
          "inhibit_warnings": true
        }
      }
    }
  }
}