Dominic: I don't have any inside info on what the Expo team is planning, but it seems unlikely to me. However, could you explain why you don't want to use expo-dev-client?

As long as you have the necessary Xcode/Android Studio installed locally you can use without needing to pay for the Priority plan. See https://docs.expo.dev/build-reference/local-builds/

Also, the Expo team has said that they intend to have a free tier for their EAS Build service (similar to their classic service) when they are ready to promote it from "preview".

Wodin: I chose expo for its simplicity but with the expo-dev-client everything kind of felt apart. There has been problems not only with the unzip but also with the FileSystem in expo-dev-client and Android permissions.

Dominic: EAS Build and expo-dev-client enables people to use so many more things (like WebRTC, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.) that were not possible before. All Expo apps would have been if all of those popular dependencies had been built in to the Expo SDK, even if your app didn't need any of those things. So they had to do something to allow people to use dependencies that include native code without having to include it in the SDK.

EAS Build is still new, so there might still be some rough edges, but I have found it to be very good for the stuff I've tried.

Perhaps you could post on the forums about problems with unzip and FileSystem? Or else create issues on GitHub? Unzip seemed to work OK when I tried it with EAS Build and expo-dev-client and there should not be problems with FileSystem.

Wodin: Ok I see your point.

I just checked out your repo and ran the installation both on iOS and Android and your example throws an Error:

failed to open zip file

at node_modules/react-native/Libraries/BatchedBridge/NativeModules.js:103:50 in promiseMethodWrapper

at node_modules/react-native-zip-archive/index.js:13:9 in unzip

at App.js:51:6 in useEffect$argument_0

So either something changed internally but the example does not work for me so far.

Dominic: hmmm... I've just tried it again now (on Android) and it still works for me. See https://gist.github.com/wodin/827fe81ada72910f401d2539d4bd5f42

Wodin: Not much I can say. I tried it with my colleague for few hours today, cloning your repo, neither on Android nor iOS the example worked.

I will leave it for now and wait until Expo eas reaches 1.x and will try it again

Great thanks Wodin

Cary: This works fine with a dev client and EAS Build. See my proof of concept above.

John White: See my PoC above

Dom Barker: See my PoC above