ExpoKit Questions

Expo SDK
1

Hi

I need to clear up a couple of things before I detach to ExpoKit.

So, I’m pretty much ready to deploy my app, but there are a couple of things I’d like to do that I can’t do with XDE at the moment, namely set up in-app purchases and build an app extension. I don’t need these ready for the first version of the app, so I was thinking I could publish, then detach and work on them. I’m conscious that detaching will break push notifications so I’d need to set it up manually as well.

So I’d like to know:

  • can I publish to the app store with XDE, detach, and publish updates? Or would I have to publish a new app?
  • the docs say that you can’t reverse a detach, but if I have it committed to git, and then detach, presumably I can revert to my previous commit if it doesn’t go well?

Many thanks.

1 Like
2

Well, you cannot publish to app store with XDE. What you are doing with XDE is sending JavaScript code to Expo servers. That app you are uploading to app store is native counterpart that would download and run JS bundle published to Expo servers.

So you can do standalone builds with Expo (precisely exp utility) for first versions of the app. In app.json can you influence details about such app which you will upload to app store.

Once you want to add some custom native functionality, eg. payments you have to detach to ExpoKit and build the native part of the app by yourself. And you will have to upload this to app store, but you don’t new app unless you make too many changes as per Apple policy.

You can still use XDE to publish JS code, this part won’t change unless you ditch whole ExpoKit and go with basic React Native.

Hope it makes sense :slight_smile:

3

Hey @fredyc my apologies I didn’t get a notification that you had replied! Thanks for the information, I have detached and have been testing my app on Test Flight.

I do still have one question though that I am unsure about, every time I make some changes, do I need to publish using XDE AND upload a new version of the app to the App Store? Or when I publish (minor) changes with XDE, should the app pull in the changes automatically?

In other words, after making some small changes to the app, which one is the correct step to update the app for the users?

  1. Publish changes on XDE, app will then be updated
  2. Publish changes on XDE and publish new version of app to app store

Thanks!
Ian