Including source code from outside root project

[vladp]

Having difficulties figuring out how to include js source code from outside the root project

My index.android.js has
import { functionX} from './../rn.common/src/js.app/SomeFunctionsThatUseRN'

The above, unfortunately causes an error.
I saw how to solve it with
getProjectRoots of the old rn-cli.config.js.
However, I could not find in migration docs, of how to do this with react-native-community/cli

So I tried what I thought might work (below)... but no success.

module.exports = {
    project: {
	ios: {},
	android: {
	    "sourceDir": "../a/andrapp1/app/src",//bundler must know the root of the java source of the app 
	    "packageName":"com.myapp1"    
	},
    },
    assets: ['./../rn.common/src/js.app/img'], 
    dependencies: {
    'rn.common': {
      root: '../rn.common',   //<-- this does not work
    },
  },
};



``
my environment:

> react-native info
info Fetching system and libraries information...
System:
    OS: Windows 10
  Binaries:
    Node: 12.8.1 - C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.EXE
    Yarn: 1.6.0 - ~\AppData\Roaming\npm\yarn.CMD
    npm: 6.5.0 - C:\Program Files\nodejs\npm.CMD

[thymikee]

You'll need to configure Metro bundler using metro.config.js, look for projectRoot and/or watchFolders

[vladp]

Thank you for pointing to metro.config.js. I would not even think to look there.
Unfortunately watchFolders does not fix what directories are allowed in import statements.

And if I set projectRoot to the shared directory (rn.common) then nothing else works (as it cannot find index.android.js) and so on.

[thymikee]

Looks like you could find some help on Metro issue tracker:

• unable to resolve path outside root directory facebook/metro#391
• Modules required from outside of root directory does not find node_modules facebook/metro#7 (comment)

[vladp]

Thank you for the pointers!. I was looking at those as well.
I think the difference is that I am not looking to share node_modules from ../common
I am just looking to include sources of javascript files there.

The part where they showed how to use metro resolver to 'expose' all the node_modules in root dir
to modules from outside of root dir, is neat though.

Thank you for your help, at any rate, it seems that I need to chase the whole problem->solution with metro folks.

[damianham]

After finding no way to solve this I ended up using gulp to watch external modules and copy them into node_modules of my RN app.