Hermes support

[Ashoat]

Hey, I just wanted to check to see if there's any interest / work on Hermes support for the React Native Debugger. The React Native team's work on JSI is still in progress, but once that is launched the approach of running the JS thread remotely won't work anymore, since JSI relies on having shared memory access between the JS thread and the native thread, which isn't possible when the two threads are running on different hosts.

The way that the React Native team is looking to address this is with Hermes, their custom JS runtime. JSI works with both Hermes and JSC, but the Hermes team has implemented the Chrome inspector protocol for Hermes, which allows the Chrome debugger running on a laptop to communicate with the Hermes runtime running on a device.

It's also possible to debug Apple's JSC through Safari, which IIRC relies on a similar "remote inspection" approach. It probably won't be easy to integrate with RND though, since RND is based on the Chrome toolset.

Given that context, it seems like the best way forward for RND to work with JSI is through Hermes. The link above explains how to get the Chrome debugger working with Hermes – I'm guessing that something similar can be done to get RND working with Hermes.

[madandrija]

If this isn't done, I'm not sure there will be any use for RND since apps crash when they touch code that uses TurboModules

[rusakovic]

It's the most important feature for implementing.
All of us will be glad to see your best react native debugger with Hermes.
Flipper - is a bull shit in comparison with your debugger!!

[pavermakov]

@rusakovic I'm glad I'm not the only one who can't stand flipper. Too bad flipper is now shipped and installed by default.

[minhchienwikipedia]

Same to me, I hope we can use RN Debugger for it, I don't want to use Flipper, it's too bad, it's hard to use, too much setup...! I hope you guys can do it ASAP, thank you guys for what you did!

[minhchienwikipedia]

I found it, we can use Reanimated 2 with React Native Debugger until version 2.3.0-alpha.2 (suggest using version 2.3.0-beta.2 for now) or you can wait for official version, this is only a beta version
https://github.com/software-mansion/react-native-reanimated/releases/tag/2.3.0-alpha.2 - Added chrome debugger support

[msageryd]

This would be awesome!
I have had a couple of weeks with Flipper. I thought Flipper was the new way to go. I even uninstalled RND, since I couldn't run it with Hermes anyway. Flipper has some nice features, but it's soo slow. Debugging Redux actions with Flipper is a PITA.

I have now reinstalled RND and will go back to V8 until RND supports Hermes. My thumbs up for this feature.

[mikeduminy]

How would this be accomplished in theory?

[imisshtml]

Yes, this would be helpful. Flipper is really horrible and on my machine it takes up too much processing power.

[vmechiev]

I hope u will implement hermes support, guys, because I don't want to use Flipper, bcs it is difficult to configurate and not so convinient as your tool.

[Ashoat]

If somebody is interested in adding a Flipper plugin with support for the Redux debugger, let me know. I don't currently have the cycles to work on it, but I have pretty good context on the problem and what it would take to solve it.

[Nantris]

This just shot to the top of my wishlist when Flipper decided it wasn't going to work on any of my machines or projects one day...