Running React Native in WSL with the emulator running directly in Windows

Question

I haven't done Android development in a while, so my knowledge of modern Android development is spotty.

I'm trying to learn React Native. I use WSL as my primary development environment. Since it'll probably be a pain to set up the Android emulator in Linux/WSL, I want to run the emulator directly on Windows. However, I'd prefer to be able to run react-native run-android in WSL.

How would I set up React Native to be able to run react-native run-android in WSL and run the app in an Android emulator on Windows?

My ANDROID_HOME variable should be set up correctly, but I don't know enough about Android to know if this is doing anything:

export ANDROID_HOME=/mnt/c/Users/Leo/AppData/Local/Android/sdk
export PATH=${PATH}:${ANDROID_HOME}/tools
export PATH=${PATH}:${ANDROID_HOME}/platform-tools

Answer 1

AFAIK it is not possible to use react-native in WSL due to a number of issues.

e.g. https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/1523

However, I've found a workaround that combines a native windows android build with a npm stack in WSL. Realistically, you'll want to install the native Windows Android Studio/SDK to use the Intellij IDE and the emulator anyway. The trick is to separate out the Gradle based Android compile.

Workflow

All project setup and package management performed in WSL with npm/yarn. react-native-cli installed globally in WSL. No need for a duplicate windows binary node/npm stack.

Don't use react-native run-android, instead compile and deploy from cmd. From the /android directory inside your project, execute the gradle wrapper gradlew.bat installDebug, or with the Creator's Update, you can do this from inside the WSL bash shell /mnt/c/Windows/System32/cmd.exe /C gradlew.bat installDebug. Don't use the unix gradlew script.

Once the APK has been assembled and uploaded to your device or emulator, run the debug server from within WSL using the command react-native start.

I've tested this out with some fairly complex projects using multiple native Android components. Hope this helps.

• Note: For this to work your project needs to be located in the native Windows file system i.e. /mnt/c.