Installing dev client on android works fine but crashes when enabling remote debugging

[itsramiel]

Summary

I am trying to use a custom development build to be able to debug with flipper; however, when opening the downloaded apk on my android device and enableing remote debugging the apps crashes directly

Managed or bare workflow? If you have made manual changes inside of the ios/ or android/ directories in your project, the answer is bare!

managed

What platform(s) does this occur on?

Android

Package versions

"expo": "~43.0.2",
"expo-community-flipper": "^43.0.5",
"expo-dev-client": "~0.6.3",
"expo-status-bar": "~1.1.0",
"react": "17.0.1",
"react-devtools-core": "^4.21.0",
"react-dom": "17.0.1",
"react-native": "0.64.3",
"react-native-flipper": "^0.123.0",
"react-native-web": "0.17.1"

Environment

Expo CLI 4.12.12 environment info:
System:
OS: Windows 10 10.0.18362
Binaries:
Node: 14.16.0 - C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.EXE
npm: 6.14.11 - C:\Program Files\nodejs\npm.CMD
IDEs:
Android Studio: Version 2020.3.0.0 AI-203.7717.56.2031.7678000
npmPackages:
expo: ~43.0.2 => 43.0.3
react: 17.0.1 => 17.0.1
react-dom: 17.0.1 => 17.0.1
react-native: 0.64.3 => 0.64.3
react-native-web: 0.17.1 => 0.17.1
Expo Workflow: managed

Reproducible demo

import { StatusBar } from "expo-status-bar";
import React from "react";
import { StyleSheet, Text, View } from "react-native";
// App.tsx
import { connectToDevTools } from "react-devtools-core";
if (__DEV__) {
	connectToDevTools({
		host: "localhost",
		port: 8097,
	});
}

export default function App() {
	return (
		<View style={styles.container}>
			<Text>Open up App.tsx to start working on your app</Text>
			<StatusBar style="auto" />
		</View>
	);
}

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
	container: {
		flex: 1,
		backgroundColor: "#fff",
		alignItems: "center",
		justifyContent: "center",
	},
});

https://github.com/ramiel1999/eas-trial-error

Stacktrace (if a crash is involved)

No response

[itsramiel]

okay so I believe I am not supposed to enable remote debugging. I am seeing console logs in flipper but Hermes debugger is not working and getting this error:
Debuggin connection was closed. Reason WebSocket disconnected Reconnect when ready by reopening DevTools

[professorx00]

I am getting the same issue.

[expo-bot]

Thank you for filing this issue!
This comment acknowledges we believe this may be a bug and there’s enough information to investigate it.
However, we can’t promise any sort of timeline for resolution. We prioritize issues based on severity, breadth of impact, and alignment with our roadmap. If you’d like to help move it more quickly, you can continue to investigate it more deeply and/or you can open a pull request that fixes the cause.

[tcdavis]

Thanks @ramiel1999. https://github.com/ramiel1999/eas-trial-error doesn't include expo-dev-client, but I was able to reproduce on my own.

[itsramiel]

So is this an android bug only? Is it working with ios? I am asking because i was following one of expo’s blogs:
https://blog.expo.dev/developing-react-native-with-expo-and-flipper-8c426bdf995a

Is there anyway to debug a managed expo workflow with flipper on android currently?

it is just that most packages use rn-reanimated and it is really getting tough not to see my redux state and do general debugging

[tcdavis]

@ramiel1999 yes, this is an Android only issue.

If you are trying to use Flipper (which will be required anyway if you are attempting to reanimated v2) then you do not need to enable remote debugging and you can just follow the guide in that post. (This is a useful workaround for anyone else encountering this issue)

[lukmccall]

@ramiel1999, you're using the managed workflow and SDK 43, so your built app will contain the react-native-reanimated. That's why your app crashes. We changed how that's working in SDK 44, where your app won't contain reanimated by default. You can read more here.

For now, I will close that. If the same problem occurs with SDK 44 and the newest expo-dev-client, please create a new issue.

[itsramiel]

Hello likmccall, I tried it with sdk 44 and the same issue. I believe it is a windows vs macos issue. I tried debugging with flipper on my friend's mac and it worked; however when I try it on my windows it doesnt work.
I guess this was a problem for debugging with flipper on windows, but there was a workaround by running this command:
'react-native start --host localhost'. You can check the issue on flipper here: facebook/flipper#1520.

Please try creating a development build and try to debug it on a windows machine. Do you get the same error mensioned this issue? Is there a workaround for it with expo?

[lukmccall]

Ok, I don't have a windows machine right now. So I can't debug this on my own, but I have the following question for you.

You said that the Hermes debugger doesn't work, but I don't see a js engine specification in your app.json. By default, expo using jsc. You can change it by adding a field in your app.json config. You can read more about this here. Could you try that with Hermes enable?

[itsramiel]

Yeah I am sorry I changed that later, but did not update the repo. My bad. However the error is after changing the engine. If the engine was still jsc, i would get something like: “No Hermes app was detected”, but that is not the issue because i changed the engine to hermes.
I really hope you could test it on a windows machine.

[lukmccall]

Will try, but this may take a while ;)

[itsramiel]

any news?

[lukmccall]

I wasn't able to reproduce that behavior. Everything was working on my end. Could you try to run the expo start with the --tunnel flag?

[itsramiel]

You were able to debug an eas development build with flipper on a windows machine? I will try again this weekend with sdk 44 and if it doesn not work i will paste the output of the expo start with --tunnel flag

[itsramiel]

is it possible to share the github repo of the demo app you created?

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open for 60 days with no activity. If there is no activity in the next 7 days, the issue will be closed.

[lukmccall]

I believe that the crash is caused by the vendored reanimated. We will bump the reanimated version hopefully before the next release. That should fix that crash.

[Nantris]

Issue persists in SDK 45 with Flipper 0.144.0. Android here too.

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open for 60 days with no activity. If there is no activity in the next 7 days, the issue will be closed.

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open for 60 days with no activity. If there is no activity in the next 7 days, the issue will be closed.

[github-actions]

This issue was closed because it has been inactive for 7 days since being marked as stale. Please open a new issue if you believe you are encountering a related problem.