[rockyj]

Ruby, Cocoapods, Homebrew are not React Native problems, they are Apple problems. They ship an OS without a development friendly package management system. Their entire toolchain has no way to manage libs/packages which led to the creation of Homebrew + Cocoapods. Apple also does not allow iOS development on other OS where package management is much better. Apple now also has added the extra complexity of a new CPU architecture which only they control.

Then you add Android to the mix, it does not get better. RN is just trying to solve the multi-platform mobile app development, it cannot solve how Apple chooses to dictate build / release of their applications.

[ncallaway]

I was going to say, the same is true of every cross platform framework I’ve ever used.

Coming back after some time away is usually 5 minutes of updating things to get Android working, and then a few hours of iOS dependency hell.

It’s definitely an issue with RN, but I haven’t used a cross platform framework that’s any better in this regard.

[kbrannigan]

I only thought it was web dev that had deployment/ installation difficulties.

So the problem is setting up and app either for development or deployment is annoying in general.

[taeric]

Sorta? You can claim it is the fault of Apple, but as it is literally the problem that RN is trying to solve, it is very much their problem.

[nine_k]

Who solves this problem any better in the cross-platform GUI space?

Well, maybe Qt, but even if it does, C++ is much less forgiving than TS.

[taeric]

Doesn't change that it is the problem that they are trying to solve, though? Does it?

[knewter]

Flutter

[woojoo666]

Electron. Everybody knows about the performance issues, but there's a reason why people still use it

[WirelessGigabit]

Stop shipping a browser with your website.

[nine_k]

I'm not sure Electron proper is a viable path for mobile development.

Offline-capable web apps are, or course, a viable alternative, as long as you can afford ignoring iOS.

[pjmlp]

The answer as always is to use platform languages instead of third party stuff.

[ericlewis]

They could they just don't. You could use npm, you could use SwiftPM. There is no tie to the cocoapods infra really - they just use it because that was there.