Increase iteration speed with PR previews
Product•Development••2 minutes read
Stanisław Chmiela
Engineering
By integrating EAS Update with GitHub we’re bringing the iteration speed of web development to React Native.
React Native applications consist of two main parts — native code and the JS bundle that orchestrates the native components. The native part of the application can only be updated via an app store update (which can take some time). However, the JS bundle can be changed over-the-air. This unlocks workflows that are impossible to achieve when developing only in native.
Traditionally, a JS bundle update was used in two scenarios:
- when developing the app — this is what happens when you refresh your app while developing with localhost bundler!
- with services like EAS Update and Microsoft CodePush to skip the app store review queue and push the updated app to your users instantly.
At Expo, our goal is to make app development faster and easier. By integrating EAS Update with GitHub we’re bridging the gap between mobile and web development workflows, bringing the iteration speed of web development to React Native.
When you enable Updates from GitHub we will build an update for every commit you push to your repository. Use this to improve your development workflow in two major ways:
Preview your teammate’s changes
Next time your teammate creates a pull request, in the Checks section you will see an “EAS Update” job. To preview the pull request changes, click “Details” and scan the Update’s QR code with a development client.
Push Updates to your users automatically
Instead of calling eas update --channel production on your computer, commit your changes to production branch and push it to GitHub. EAS will build an update for the pushed commit and publish it to the production branch. Or, you can push to v1 branch — an update will be published to v1 branch.
Enable PR previews now
Go to https://expo.dev/accounts/[account]/projects/[project]/github and enable the “Updates” setting.
EAS as your go-to deployment platform
We believe this new feature will help you review code and simplify your deployment patterns. Recently added GitHub integrations with EAS Build, Submit, Insights and now, Update are just a start to a series of new EAS capabilities we’ll be rolling out over the next months. Stay tuned!
In a recent livestream we live demo'd this capability. Check out PR previews in action:
