NOTE: This guide focuses on Android development. You'll need a Mac to build iOS apps.
As React Native on iOS requires a Mac and most of the engineers at Facebook and contributors use Macs, support for OS X is a top priority. However, we would like to support developers using Linux and Windows too. We believe we'll get the best Linux and Windows support from people using these operating systems on a daily basis.
Therefore, Linux and Windows support for the development environment is an ongoing community responsibility. This can mean filing issues and submitting PRs, and we'll help review and merge them. We are looking forward to your contributions and appreciate your patience.
As of version 0.13 (currently in rc) Android development with React native is mostly possible on Linux and Windows. You'll need to install Node.js 4.0 or newer. On Linux we recommend installing watchman, otherwise you might hit a node file watching bug.
The basic Android development workflow should be working.
Opening the Chrome debugger when you select Menu -> Debug JS is not supported yet. There is the PR #3394 for this (merged in 0.14.0-rc).
On Windows the packager won't be started automatically when you run react-native run-android. You can start it manually using:
Opening the Chrome debugger when you select Menu -> Debug JS is not supported yet. There is the PR #3394 for this (merged in 0.14.0-rc).