About React Native Support

[GeoffreyFardeau]

Hi everyone

I'm a student developer looking into using Ferrostar for a project. I'm a bit confused about the current state of React Native support.

I've seen some mixed infos, is there a stable way to use Ferrostar with RN right now? mostly, I'm trying to figure out if it's "production ready" or if it's still too experimental for a serious project.

Any advice or clarification would be super helpful. Thanks!

[ianthetechie]

cc @bjtrounson?

[bjtrounson]

Yeah currently we have been waiting on a external libraries to update. The current version isn't really runnable in it's current state.

Since the core library upgraded version to uniffi 0.30 which the react native bindgen layer doesn't support yet :/

There is a PR for this jhugman/uniffi-bindgen-react-native#333

We were also waiting for MapLibre React Native to come more support for new architecture definitely for the MapView and Camera components as we were encountering quite a few bugs since we have to use new arch with uniffi-bindgen-react-native. This PR has been merge and I did test that iOS and android were compiling. But then got stuck from the uniffi upgrade.

You can track the current status from the project Ferrostar React Native

[bjtrounson]

@GeoffreyFardeau If you're interested in a more up-to-date version of the React Native integration, I have a branch in progress here: https://github.com/bjtrounson/ferrostar/tree/refactor/bun-and-package-upgrade

It's in a pretty good state. Most features are implemented, with speech and annotation being the main ones still missing. I also need to add autocomplete search similar to the Android example, but the project compiles and runs.

Prerequisites

Before building, make sure you have the required Rust dependencies installed. Follow the pre-installation guide here: https://jhugman.github.io/uniffi-bindgen-react-native/guides/rn/pre-installation.html

Build instructions (only tested on Android so far):

From the react-native directory:

bun run install
bun run clean
bun run build:android
bun run example:android

[GeoffreyFardeau]

Thanks @bjtrounson, I'll give it a try and report back. Happy to help out if needed
I'm more comfortable with React Native than Rust, but I can contribute where it makes sense.

[bjtrounson]

Awesome, I would recommend using a Linux or Mac if you are able. Building from source on Windows can be quite annoying when setting up the right linkers needed to build the android side.

Since I posted this, I have also got a initial version of the speech and autocomplete working. It's just the annotations that aren't there at the moment.

Currently doing a test integration into one of my companies apps an polishing the publish flow.

[bjtrounson]

@GeoffreyFardeau I have finally created a PR for this. Just wanting to wait for some upstream issue on the uniffi-bindgen-react-native side to get resolved so I can revert some of the core changes I have had to do to get this running.

Here is the PR if you want to keep track: #883

Going to be looking at creating the CI/CD pipeline soon over hopefully this weekend I will have something for that as well.