How to fix npm start "cannot determine native SDK version" error?

Question

I'm trying to run my react native code from a github repository on ubuntu by using npm start and expo. When I run npm start I get the follow error:

"Cannot determine which native SDK version your project uses because the module expo is not installed. Please install it with yarn add expo and try again."

I have tried the 'yarn add expo' but that doesn't seem to work because I can't get yarn to work and it doesn't recognize 'add'. I haven't found anything on this problem either. Does somebody know what is going on?

Answer 1

Try npm install expo instead of yard add expo.

Note: yarn is another package manager just like npm. If you have npm installed already then you can replace yarn add with npm install always.

Answer 2

Just wanted to chime in that running npm install solved the problem for me. (I figured out that the problem was probably because my dependencies were not properly installed.)

When grabbing the project from a remote repository, it obviously isn't going to grab the node_modules folder (folder with all the project dependencies) because it's in the .gitignore. Why is it in the .gitignore? Because it's too big and can be easily downloaded on a local machine when needed (by running npm install).

This npm install command installs all dependencies in package.json into a local folder called node_modules, thus ensuring all my dependencies are properly installed. This then allows my project to work.

Answer 3

I updated npm to the latest version -> npm install -g npm@latest

Uninstalled expo -> npm uninstall -g expo-cli --save

Deleted the .expo folder, reinstalled expo & this worked for me.

Answer 4

This might help for some, because I am new to rn expo. And got this error.

yarn install