Can you build React Native apps (Android app) on Ubuntu?

Question

As I can see here you need OS X to build apps with React Native. That is probably because they used it at first to create only iOS apps. Now it's possible to create Android apps with React Native but they still require OS X as development platform which doesn't make sense to me. Is there any way to create Android apps using React Native on Ubuntu OS or any other Linux?

Answer 1

Update 2: I've been developing React native apps on Ubuntu for some time now, without any issues.

Update 1: It's almost possible on linux and windows now. Check this doc page: link

Old answer: It's already almost working, from the issue shared in kzzzf's answer:

Everything works on Linux except: react-native run-android can't open a new shell window, you need to use react-native start. Will be fixed in next release. Debugging in Chrome currently relies on an AppleScript to launch Chrome. There's a PR to replace that.

Answer 2

Building on linux and windows is not officially supported although there are people in the community already sending pull requests that will allow to do so (main obstacle is the fact of using apple-script and calling to shell scripts from node - from react-packager and from react-cli). Main task for tracking those efforts is here: https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/2693