react-native: 'Couldn't follow symbolic link' when testing release build for Android

Description

When following the tutorials for generating the release APK for Android, I get the error described in Reproduction and cannot progress with build.

I don’t recall modifying the node_modules folder manually, so not sure what happened to the symbolic link.

I’ve seen the same issue here, but just wanted to point this out since my version (0.34.1) was released in September and its unclear in the old issue as to why its safe to remove these symbolic links.

Following the steps in the issue addressed above allowed me to build, but /.bin/repeating was also missing.

Reproduction

  1. Follow steps described in the documentation above up until creating the release build.
  2. Run cd android && ./gradlew assembleRelease in project root folder.
FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Could not list contents of '~/myapp/node_modules/.bin/detect-indent'. Couldn't follow symbolic link.

* Try:
Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace. Run with --debug option to get more log output.

BUILD FAILED

Additional Information

  • React Native version: v0.34.1
  • Platform: Android
  • Operating System: MacOS

About this issue

  • Original URL
  • State: closed
  • Created 8 years ago
  • Reactions: 27
  • Comments: 17 (1 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

Removing .bin did not work, but rm -rf node_modules && npm install did the trick

+68
juiceo on Aug 16, 2017

This worked for me: to delete the broken test-driver-link as follows

unlink node_modules/react-native/third-party/glog-0.3.4/test-driver

+48
mtebele on Aug 23, 2017

no need in removing the whole node_modules folder, for me was enough to remove only node_modules/.bin/ folder

+41
cherniv on Jan 5, 2017

Closing this as removing node_modules/.bin/, in addition to a few other package directories solved the issue.

+23
Naoto-Ida on Jan 6, 2017

Did you try removing your node_modules folder and installing dependencies again? What is the content of your package.json?

+8
damusnet on Dec 4, 2016

Issue still exists on RN v0.42.0. Fixed by removing node_modules/.bin/

+6
ghuh on Mar 18, 2017

Removing node_modules/.bin/ worked for me too.

+6
jqn on Jan 26, 2017

unlinking packages maybe not the solution for everyone , but

rm -rf node_modules && npm install

is the way around.

+5
rajat-np on Dec 29, 2017

removing node_modules/.bin/ worked for me to

+4
mihaisampaleanu on Jul 22, 2017

I don’t why but for some reason yarn install worked!

+3
mtx62 on Dec 16, 2017

@lappalj4 this make my day ❤️

+2
cinder92 on Aug 25, 2017

Removing node_modules/.bin/ worked

+2
JansenZ on Apr 20, 2017

have tried delete node_modules and then npm install. This worked for me.

+1
TunvirRahman on Mar 27, 2018
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