I'm going to take you to my journey on how to smoothly reduce an android application made with React Native/Expo and hopefully without getting any error. Let's begin the journey!
First things first, let's talk about my development environment. I'm using Lubuntu 20.04 focal
, with Desktop Environment LxQt 0.14.1
and the details as shown in the picture below. I've successfully reduce my app for about 49% (the universal version).
Requirements
There are several package you need to install in order to have smooth build.
Install JRE, JDK and check the installation
sudo apt-get install default-jre
sudo apt-get install defalut-jdk
java -version
javac -version
Install Expo Command Line
sudo npm install --global expo-cli
Install Android Command Line Tools
sudo export ANDROID_HOME=/usr/lib/android-sdk
sudo wget https://dl.google.com/android/repository/commandlinetools-linux-6609375_latest.zip
sudo unzip commandlinetools-linux-6609375_latest.zip -d cmdline-tools
sudo mv cmdline-tools $ANDROID_HOME/
sudo export PATH=$ANDROID_HOME/cmdline-tools/tools/bin:$PATH
Set up licenses
Go to /usr/lib/android-sdk/ directory
cd /usr/lib/android-sdk/
We need to accept the license before using the sdk
sudo yes | sdkmanager --licenses
And also we need to change the permission on /tmp
folder
sudo chmod -R 0777 /tmp
Action
So, the first action you need to take is open up your expo react native folder in a terminal. Make sure you back up your project files first, for safety.
Run the following command
expo eject
You will be asked with several question, and just answer it based on your project information. After you finish, there will be a new folder inside your project called android and IOs.
Go to android
folder and make a new file called local.properties
. This file will be used for pointing the sdk that gradle need in order to build your application.
cd android
touch local.properties
sudo nano local.properties
add the sdk.dir
variable like this
sdk.dir = /usr/lib/android-sdk/
Ctrl + O, Enter, Ctrl + x to save it.
Next, go to the android/app
folder on your terminal and generate a keystore for your application so that you can publish it in Google Play Store.
cd android/app
sudo keytool -genkey -v -keystore yourkeyname.keystore -alias yourkeyaliasname -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000
Replace yourkeyname
and yourkeyaliasname
. And you will be asked for password. Make sure you remember the password.
After finish, a new file will appear with the extension (.keystore). That's your key. Now head back one directory and edit the gradle.properties
file.
cd ..
sudo nano gradle.properties
add this line below
MYAPP_UPLOAD_STORE_FILE=yourkeyname.keystore
MYAPP_UPLOAD_KEY_ALIAS=yourkeyaliasname
MYAPP_UPLOAD_STORE_PASSWORD=yourkeypassword
MYAPP_UPLOAD_KEY_PASSWORD=yourkeypassword
org.gradle.jvmargs=-Xmx4096m
Replace yourkeyname
, yourkeyaliasname
and yourkeypassword
then save it.
Now, go to app
folder and edit the build.gradle
file
cd app
sudo nano build.gradle
Change these line from false to true
def enableSeparateBuildPerCPUArchitecture = false
def enableProguardInReleaseBuilds = false
Scroll down into signingConfigs
and add this configuration below the debug
release {
if (project.hasProperty('MYAPP_UPLOAD_STORE_FILE')) {
storeFile file(MYAPP_UPLOAD_STORE_FILE)
storePassword MYAPP_UPLOAD_STORE_PASSWORD
keyAlias MYAPP_UPLOAD_KEY_ALIAS
keyPassword MYAPP_UPLOAD_KEY_PASSWORD
}
Then, in the buildTypes
look in curly brackets for release
change this line
signingConfig signingConfigs.debug
to
signingConfig signingConfigs.release
Also add this line below the minifyEnabled
shrinkResources true
Then scroll down to the last line, add a closing curly bracket (}
). I don't know I'm getting an error without this strange closing curly bracket.
The last thing, if you also want to build an universal apk file then scroll up and search for splits, inside the abi
change universalApk
from false
to true
. Save it.
Note: If your app doesn't contain any permission, make sure you don't have any use permission
code inside AndroidManifest.xml.
Because by default, if you're not set the permission in the package.json, expo will automatically add every permission to your app and I'm having this issue when I was trying to publish to Google play store, so make sure you check that part.
Now everything is ready, time to build. Head back to android
folder where the gradlew
file exist. Log in terminal as super user, to avoid permission issues.
cd ..
sudo su
If you want to build the .apk file, run this command
./gradlew assembleRelease
Or if you want to build as a bundle (.aab) file run this command
./gradlew buildRelease
In my case, this take about 5-18 minutes depending on your machine and your project. The output will be in app/build/outputs/apk/release
for .apk
and app/build/outputs/bundle/release
for .aab
.
Well, that's all I guess. Hope it help, thank you for reading and sorry for a bad English. Cheers~
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