Configure Java in Arch Linux to run a React Native application

Building applications with React Native on Linux or macOS usually need some extra configuration like setting environment variables that sometimes is not clear about where or how to put them.

I am using Arch Linux in my second computer, so I decided to configure it to develop a React Native application. I installed everything and by the time I run the app with:

react-native run-android

I got some errors regarding the version of Java, the environment variable and some others, so in order to run your app correctly you must follow these steps:

• Install jdk8-openjdk because with Java 10 I couldn’t run the app.

sudo pacman -S jdk8-openjdk

• Add JAVA_HOME to your .bash_profile file

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/default

• List your Java environments with

archlinux-java status

• Set a default Java environment

archlinux-java set [java-8-openjdk]

• Finally

source ~/.bash_profile

With those simple steps you will be able to run your react-native application on Arch Linux!