podfile questions in regards to react native - react-native

Question

I'm currently trying to set up my first RN app on a Mac. I'm new to iPhone development as well as Macs in general. So of course I'm in the process of learning and debugging. Obviously, different people on the forums recommend a variety of different approaches to address a variety of different issues. And there is some overlap between native iOS development and RN app configuration on a Mac.
I have some questions in regards to the Podfile. Sometimes people on forums recommend making updates to the Podfile for a variety of reasons. But I think that I've read a comment by at least one developer that Podfile should not be manually updated. What is your opinion on this from a RN app config perspective?
As part of one proposed solution, one developer recommended deleting the Podfile.lock file. It seems to me that the .lock is placed on Podfile for a reason. To maintain some type of integrity, etc. So would you ever manually delete the Podfile.lock file during the course of troubleshooting? Or would you only do this indirectly through the execution of some other type of more structured process?

Answer 1

With RN versions 0.60+ you almost do not need to touch the pod file.
Unless:
1) You have some old react native library dependency that do not support auto-linking or
2) Need to change the targeted platform from platform :ios, '9.0' to something newer or
3) Need some external SDK dependency and have to add some line like pod 'Google-Mobile-Ads-SDK'
Just go to ios folder and run
pod install or
pod install --repo-update
All the React libraries and the ones you added with yarn or npm (that support auto linking) will be installed.
For older libraries you should get some warning that they cannot be linked and you should just use react-native link <libraryName> or just add a line in pod file and run pod install again.
More details:
This is how a RN 0.61.4 pod file for a basic app (called RnDiffApp) looks like:
platform :ios, '9.0'
require_relative '../node_modules/#react-native-community/cli-platform-ios/native_modules'
target 'RnDiffApp' do
# Pods for RnDiffApp
pod 'FBLazyVector', :path => "../node_modules/react-native/Libraries/FBLazyVector"
pod 'FBReactNativeSpec', :path => "../node_modules/react-native/Libraries/FBReactNativeSpec"
pod 'RCTRequired', :path => "../node_modules/react-native/Libraries/RCTRequired"
pod 'RCTTypeSafety', :path => "../node_modules/react-native/Libraries/TypeSafety"
pod 'React', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/'
pod 'React-Core', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/'
pod 'React-CoreModules', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/React/CoreModules'
pod 'React-Core/DevSupport', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/'
pod 'React-RCTActionSheet', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/Libraries/ActionSheetIOS'
pod 'React-RCTAnimation', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/Libraries/NativeAnimation'
pod 'React-RCTBlob', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/Libraries/Blob'
pod 'React-RCTImage', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/Libraries/Image'
pod 'React-RCTLinking', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/Libraries/LinkingIOS'
pod 'React-RCTNetwork', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/Libraries/Network'
pod 'React-RCTSettings', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/Libraries/Settings'
pod 'React-RCTText', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/Libraries/Text'
pod 'React-RCTVibration', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/Libraries/Vibration'
pod 'React-Core/RCTWebSocket', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/'
pod 'React-cxxreact', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/ReactCommon/cxxreact'
pod 'React-jsi', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/ReactCommon/jsi'
pod 'React-jsiexecutor', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/ReactCommon/jsiexecutor'
pod 'React-jsinspector', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/ReactCommon/jsinspector'
pod 'ReactCommon/jscallinvoker', :path => "../node_modules/react-native/ReactCommon"
pod 'ReactCommon/turbomodule/core', :path => "../node_modules/react-native/ReactCommon"
pod 'Yoga', :path => '../node_modules/react-native/ReactCommon/yoga'
pod 'DoubleConversion', :podspec => '../node_modules/react-native/third-party-podspecs/DoubleConversion.podspec'
pod 'glog', :podspec => '../node_modules/react-native/third-party-podspecs/glog.podspec'
pod 'Folly', :podspec => '../node_modules/react-native/third-party-podspecs/Folly.podspec'
target 'RnDiffAppTests' do
inherit! :search_paths
# Pods for testing
end
use_native_modules!
end
target 'RnDiffApp-tvOS' do
# Pods for RnDiffApp-tvOS
target 'RnDiffApp-tvOSTests' do
inherit! :search_paths
# Pods for testing
end
end
The line use_native_modules! will just tell CocoaPods to install (when you run pod install) all native deps from node_modules that support auto linking.
For those react-native dependencies from node_modules when you run pod install you should see some note like this:
Detected React Native module pods for RNCAsyncStorage, RNDeviceInfo ...
You should not need to touch the Podfile.lock.