Open Metro in iTerm on macOS

[cpojer]

Describe the Feature

A lot of people use iTerm 2 on macOS. When using run-android or run-ios, Metro is started in Terminal.app even when launched from iterm. Ideally we'd create a new tab or window in iTerm.

Possible Implementations

• If there is a way to detect whether run-android/ios was invoked from within iTerm, use iTerm.
• Otherwise, provide a way to set this as a configuration (per project, per computer) once and reuse the setting

Related Issues

Note that run-android already has an option to chose the terminal via an environment variable. It looks like it should work but it didn't when I just tested it.

[thymikee]

Current terminal is available behind TERM_PROGRAM (at least on macOS), so we should likely try that before the REACT_TERMINAL and a default one.

[talon-i-am]

You can always open Finder and find the launchPackager.command file under node_modules/react-native/scripts/. Right click the file, choose get info, then change the "Open with:" section to iTerm, and click on Change All.

[gatspy]

npx react-native run-ios also open Terminal.app

[swrobel]

anyone ... maybe @lucasbento ... clear on why both of these still open Terminal.app, not iTerm?

$ yarn react-native run-ios --terminal iTerm

$ REACT_TERMINAL=iTerm yarn react-native run-ios

I've also tried iTerm.app instead of iTerm and the behavior is the same

macOS 10.17.7
react-native-community/cli: 4.13.1
react-native: 0.63.4

[mattwoberts]

@swrobel I think the --terminal attribute only applies to the build of the project. Metro always loads in teminal.app for me, no matter what you try changing this to. I resolved this with the handy hint from @TheTalonHughes above.

[swrobel]

Thanks @mattwoberts but the examples provided in #310 indicate that it should work with run-ios...

[good-idea]

I'm using tmux and the trick above doesn't work... It would be nice if the process just ran in the same shell where I invoke run-ios!!

[willxy]

Looks like this was implemented in facebook/react-native#24436 which added support for $RCT_TERMINAL, $REACT_TERMINAL, and $TERM_PROGRAM in React/React.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj, but looks like React/React.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj was later removed in facebook/react-native#25583.

There's now a https://github.com/facebook/react-native/blob/main/template/ios/HelloWorld.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj but that doesn't include any of the support for $RCT_TERMINAL, $REACT_TERMINAL, $TERM_PROGRAM etc.