iOS react-native header path failure with use_frameworks! and pnpm

When using pnpm as a package manager along with use_frameworks! iOS builds fail because the header files for the React-bridging pod don't get copied to the correct directory.

They should end up at iOS/Pods/Headers/Private/React-bridging/react/bridging but they actually end up at ios/build/Build/Products/Debug-iphonesimulator/React-bridging/.pnpm/[email protected]_xbangyd2oalr524ah376m5q3oi_tf4i3rco7go2qrnsv66v2274bm/node_modules/react-native/ReactCommon/react/bridging .

I'm not sure if this is specific to EAS build but that's what I use so I made the repro using it.

Motivation

use_framewoks! is a requirement for react-native-firebase v15 and up since the underlying google libraries have a hard requirement for it. I need to use v15+ in my app to support firebase cloud functions v2.

pnpm is used because I've been bitten by "ghost dependencies" too many times in a monorepo. Hoisting all packages to root level and allowing any package to be resolved if it just happens to be required transitively by any project in the repo is a recipe for pain. pnpm fixes that by disallowing resolution of undeclared dependencies, requiring correct peer deps, and not hoisting anything. See below for tweaks needed to work around metro deficiencies.

To reproduce

1. npm install -g pnpm
2. npm install -g eas-cli
3. pnpm install
4. pnpm build-local

Observe the build failing. Result is a temp folder output at the end of build. Open it with XCode to see the mangled path in the build phases of the React-bridging pod.

Manual fix

If you change the copy phase of the React-bridging pod to an absolute path of $(PODS_ROOT)/Headers/Private/React-bridging/react/bridging the headers get copied to the correct location. This fixes building of the pods project but the main project still fails.

Add $(PODS_ROOT)/Headers/Private/React-bridging to the main project header search paths and the project will finally build.

Possibly related issues

facebook/react-native#34102

CocoaPods/CocoaPods#2382

CocoaPods/CocoaPods#6603

CocoaPods/CocoaPods#9451

CocoaPods/CocoaPods#5790

pnpm setup

To make pnpm work with react-native there are a couple of changes to the expo defaults for this project

1. metro.config.js uses @rnx-kit/metro-resolver/symlinks to work around lack of symlink support in metro
2. .npmrc contains a couple public-hoist-pattern entries to ensure some undeclared dependencies are resolvable in node_modules.
3. There are a few dependencies added to devDependencies since pnpm doesn't allow undeclared dependencies to be resolved, they need to be stated explicitly instead of hopefully/maybe installed as a transitive dep.

Fixes attempted

1. patches/[email protected] fixes the header path of React-bridging per react-native #34102
2. update_ios_podfile_plugin.js modifies the Podfile to work around CocoaPods #5970 (not sure if entirely necessary)

Per the above reproduction description the build can be made to work by manually fixing the copy step of the React-bridging pod and manually adding a header search path to the root project.

I'm not sure how to apply proper fixes for either of those issues.

Environment info

System:
    OS: macOS 12.5.1
    CPU: (10) arm64 Apple M1 Pro
    Memory: 234.75 MB / 16.00 GB
    Shell: 0.68.1 - /Users/imagio/.cargo/bin/nu
  Binaries:
    Node: 16.17.0 - ~/Library/Caches/fnm_multishells/47864_1663586667411/bin/node
    Yarn: 1.22.19 - ~/Library/Caches/fnm_multishells/47864_1663586667411/bin/yarn
    npm: 7.18.1 - ~/Library/Caches/fnm_multishells/47864_1663586667411/bin/npm
    Watchman: Not Found
  Managers:
    CocoaPods: 1.11.3 - /Users/imagio/.asdf/shims/pod
  SDKs:
    iOS SDK:
      Platforms: DriverKit 21.4, iOS 16.0, macOS 12.3, tvOS 16.0, watchOS 9.0
    Android SDK: Not Found
  IDEs:
    Android Studio: Dolphin 2021.3.1 Dolphin 2021.3.1
    Xcode: 14.0/14A309 - /usr/bin/xcodebuild
  Languages:
    Java: 17.0.4.1 - /usr/bin/javac
  npmPackages:
    @react-native-community/cli: Not Found
    react: 18.0.0 => 18.0.0
    react-native: 0.69.5 => 0.69.5
    react-native-macos: Not Found
  npmGlobalPackages:
    *react-native*: Not Found