Create-react-native-app: Stuck in "Starting packager"

[tleunen]

I installed the project, got the latest version with React 16, but I'm trying to reuse some code from a project using React 15 so I downgraded all versions to what's specified here. But now, it seems the process is stuck in "Starting packager...".

Any reason why I'm having this issue? And how can I fix/debug it?

• npm ls react-native-scripts: [email protected]
• npm ls react-native: [email protected]
• npm ls expo: [email protected]
• node -v: v7.10.0
• npm -v: 4.6.1
• yarn --version: 0.23.4
• watchman version: "version": "4.7.0"

Also specify:

1. Operating system: mac OS
2. Phone/emulator/simulator & version: npm start or npm run ios produces the same issue

[deepmehtait]

@tleunen : You can try to find current running node processes and kill them. Also try to clear watchman watchman watch-del-all (do it multiple times), close all open terminals and react-native start --reset-cache. Had similar issue and solved by killing all node processes, clearing watchman and reseting cache.

[tleunen]

I tried it, and killed all node processes. I even restarted the machine and it still stuck.
I can see that the script is spawning a couple of node processes, but I don't see anything but "Starting packager" in the console and the processes don't seem very active.

[deepmehtait]

@tleunen : try to clean up your rm -rf node_modules folder and npm i see if that helps?

[tleunen]

Nop :(

I tried to create a blank new app and it works fine there. So it seems there's something wrong in my other project but the system doesn't tell me what...

[brentvatne]

what sdkVersion is specified in app.json?

[tleunen]

15.0.0

[brentvatne]

can you share the repo with me privately?

[tleunen]

Could you try this one? https://github.com/tleunen/rn-myapp

It's a basic create-react-native-app install, then I updated the versions in the package.json and app.json, and fully rebuild/fetch the dependencies.

[brentvatne]

@tleunen - is that one broken for you too?

[tleunen]

Yep, as soon as I change the versions for react, expo and react-native, the packager doesn't start

[brentvatne]

@tleunen - I see! the problem is that react-native-scripts isn't guaranteed to be backwards compatible, and in this case it was not. It would have been better to have an error message to indicate that -- I didn't anticipate that anybody would want to create a new project and downgrade. If you install [email protected] this will be fixed (tried it on your example project)

[tleunen]

Oh I see. Thanks!

The reason why I wanted to downgrade is because I'm trying to integrate with another app which was built with react 15.4. And when I tried it at first, I got a few errors related to react/lib/ReactTransitionGroup not being found (probably because a few things used React 16 and some others React 15. So I wanted to downgrade and see if it resolved my issue.

Anyway, thanks for finding the root cause. Funny enough, I tried to change the version of the scripts but didn't go low enough to 0.0.26 :)

[RohanNg]

I am using Ubuntu 16.04. Now the problem happens to me even with fresh CNRA app.
https://github.com/react-community/create-react-native-app/issues/343

[vladimirovvk]

This should resolve the "Starting packager" issue: https://forums.expo.io/t/packager-not-loading-on-linux/2034/3

[marco-fp]

Clean installation of Antergos with Gnome, npm 4.6.1, node 6.11.2. Clean project just generated with create-react-native-app 1.0.0.
Already tried:

 sudo sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_instances=1024
 sudo sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_watches=12288

Didn't fix the issue, still stuck.

[vladimirovvk]

After dealing sometime with this problem, the only stable solution I found was to install watchman. Now everything is OK.

[praWeb]

I have tried all the above solutions. But none of them had worked. It was working fine till last week. Suddenly it stopped working. Any other suggestions please.

[brentvatne]

@praWeb - jump into https://slack.expo.io and dm brent, include the output from react-native info for me (install react-native-cli (npm i -g react-native-cli) and run react-native info inside of your project)

[bugkias]

Try to install yarn, then run 'yarn start' instead of 'npm start' or 'react-native start'

[ballenwillis]

For me, if I just press 'q' it displays the QR code, but it won't display the QR code automatically. If I don't press 'q', it will just say "running packager". However, then it leads to issue 81.

[kakkarott]

For me, if I just press 'q' it displays the QR code, but it won't display the QR code automatically. If I don't press 'q', it will just say "running packager". However, then it leads to issue 81.

works for me

[harshalthakre]

[email protected] start /home/harshal/react-Native/AwesomeProject

react-native-scripts start

00:44:36: Starting packager...

its been five minutes its still have'nt started, I think it will wait for infinite time?
Whats the issue here?

[stopal]

Well... its almost a year since this is posted. Even the "Getting Started" skeleton wont work... and i cant figure out why. This cant be right :(

[marksilvis]

Removing the following from app.json worked for me:

"packagerOpts": {
  "nonPersistent": true
}

[nickerlan]

For me the same issue was in accessing expo.io
The solution worked for me is using proxy.

Thanks to @p0liper for setting up special solution for that: https://github.com/react-community/create-react-native-app/issues/653

[pashute]

By me the issue was that the start command in package.json had changed from:

"start": "node node_modules/react-native/local-cli/cli.js start",

to

    "start": "react-native-scripts start",
"eject": "react-native-scripts eject",
"android": "react-native-scripts android",
"ios": "react-native-scripts ios",
"test": "jest"

[kenji-1996]

Really blows my mind that these sort of problems are in a starter seed that facebook themselves published.
If you want to get people into your platform then this is not the way to do it

[abayo-luc]

Just delete the yarn lock file, and run yarn start

[pashute]

thanks abayo-luc that solved it!

[kenji-1996]

Alot of people are using NPM; and these sorts of problems shouldnt need weird trouble shooting to fix

[brentvatne]

this is an old issue that conflates a bunch of different root causes with one message. locked conversation because it's off topic.

@kenji-1996 - this library is not published or maintained by facebook. feel free to help out or get out.