React Native for Android: How we built the first cross-platform React Native app

What this post added

This post details the development and release of React Native for Android, building upon the existing React Native for iOS. It highlights the technical decisions and challenges in creating the Ads Manager app as Facebook's first cross-platform React Native application. Key contributions include strategies for maximizing code reuse (85%) between iOS and Android versions through platform-specific file extensions and component refactoring, and the development of a system to manage code across separate iOS and Android repositories, including a cronjob for syncing JavaScript code and enabling JavaScript developers to test on both platforms from the iOS repository. It also discusses the implementation of the Navigator component for complex navigation flows and animations, and the use of InteractionManager to prevent JavaScript thread blocking during data processing.