Fast Refresh Not Working in React Native in Visual Studio Code

Question

At some point, I believe when the project was update to RN 0.63.2 fast refresh completely stopped working when running debug iOS from Visual Studio Code.

Fast refresh does still work when running from Xcode. (However then I loose the ability to set breakpoints in VSC)
Strangely + thankfully the other devs on the project haven’t experienced this issue.

I believe I’ve tried every suggestion mentioned on the internet including:

Reinstalling watchman
Cleaning the watchman cache
Cleaning the yarn cache
Nuking node modules and pods (20X)
Restarting computer (5X)
Cold showers
Nuking and re-cloning the entire repo.
rm -rf .git/index.lock
Reinstalling React Native Tools in VSC
Making sure VSC is the latest.
Toggling debug on/off in the sim action sheet menu
Toggling Fast Refresh on/off in the sim action sheet menu
Updating the sim
Erasing + reinstalling on the sim

I’m currently having to completely close VSC (+ the metro bundler) and rebuild every time I make a change. Ug.

Hi Alistair, did you manage to fix this problem? I'm currently facing it, it's quite annoying :( — nmilcoff, Sep 14 '20 at 21:36
Nope. At the moment I'm stuck using Xcode with React Native Debugger attached. (you can set breakpoints...but it's a lot more tedious launching the 3 apps + sim to work. ug). — Alistair Cooper, Sep 15 '20 at 22:39
Sorry nope. My current best hope it waiting until I'm eligible for a new MBP from my company. React-Native-Life. — Alistair Cooper, Dec 11 '20 at 23:35
I have the same issue, and I found this thread https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/28420 ... the `sudo npx react-native start` solution worked for me. — danihazler, Feb 02 '21 at 11:39
In all seriousness, I'm experiencing the same issue atm and came here before trying the nuclear option of recloning the entire project — Seeeyonnn, Mar 02 '21 at 23:07

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 31 '20 at 13:15

I have been experiencing the same issue and went through many of the same possible answers with no luck.

I was curious as to why many people found that clearing the git index.lock worked. I did not have such a file so clearing it was not an option - however I then got to wondering if the issue is related to git permissions and the storage of credentials. I use a number of repositories across different projects and these include GitHub, BitBucket and AWS with the credentials helper for AWS being a bit of a pain. The project I was experiencing issue with was on BitBucket and in vsCode I was being prompted for credentials on PULL etc but thought nothing of it.

I eventually switched to using the git local disk credential store to get round that (not recommended) and then discovered that watchman/RN Tools was working again!

So that is the good news and may help some. I have however recently restarted my machine and find I am back in the same painful position.

So this is not the whole answer but does suggest there is a linkup between the issue and GIT - never been able to establish why!

I live for the answer as productivity is significantly impacted by having to restart metro and the debugger every time I make a change.

Fast Refresh Not Working in React Native in Visual Studio Code

1 Answers1