Does Re.Pack Work with Expo (expo-cli) and EAS Build?

[woals4815]

Hi team,

I’m currently evaluating Re.Pack as an alternative bundler for a React Native project and I’d like to clarify its compatibility with the Expo ecosystem.

Specifically, I’m trying to understand:

1. Can Re.Pack run inside an Expo (expo-cli) project?

Since Expo uses Metro by default, I’m wondering whether Re.Pack can be integrated at the project level without ejecting or modifying the native build pipeline.

If integration is not supported, I’d like to confirm if the main blockers are related to the managed workflow, Metro Dev Server assumptions, or Expo's custom build environment.

2. Is Re.Pack compatible with EAS Build?

If I build the app using EAS Build, is it technically possible to replace Metro with Re.Pack during the native build process?

Does EAS provide any hooks or configuration surfaces that allow overriding the bundler?

Are there known limitations or recommended workarounds?

Context

I’m considering Re.Pack mainly for:

Faster builds (Webpack/Rspack)

Improved code splitting capabilities

Better long-term flexibility for a large-scale application

Before investing more time, I’d appreciate guidance on whether Expo’s current toolchain supports (or plans to support) this level of bundler customization.

Thanks in advance for any clarification!

[ElielC]

Eas build can be easily used, there is a example on the showcase

Expo-cli is more complex, i currently have a custom template based on the expo-template-bare-minimum where basically the only difference is i added the config on the android and ios files to configure xcode and setup the correct entry file on android
https://re-pack.dev/docs/migration-guides/metro

In the end i use expo cli to run CNG and prebuild(one the most useful thing on the cli) and generate the debud builds on android and ios, the server is replaced from metro to re.pack, so the cli can`t be used there

[woals4815]

Thanks for the answer! However, as far as I know, the Expo CLI is tightly coupled with the Metro server, and the link you attached (https://re-pack.dev/docs/migration-guides/metro
) also shows that the React Native bundle and build scripts inside Xcode are configured to build using the react-native-community CLI.
So when you mentioned a custom template, did you mean that even the default Expo CLI setup is customized?

[ElielC]

Not really, what we do is use the Expo CLI to run the prebuild and run commands, something like this:
expo prebuild --clean --template ../../templates/expo-template-repack-53.0.38.tgz
expo run:(android|ios) --device --no-bundler here --no-bundler ensures the CLI does not attempt to rum metro, unfortunately yes Expo CLI is coupled with metro and we can not run custom commands.

On start we run: ROZENITE=true react-native start

The customization comes in the template where we apply the Xcode config to build with the community CLI and make sure that on android MainApplication.kt the module name is index
override fun getJSMainModuleName(): String = "index"

And bundleCommand = "bundle" on app/build.gradle together with the default cliFile path
The correct base expo template is called expo-template-bare-minimum

We are using only a couple of features from the Expo CLI, however unless you need to use Expo Router, we found this setup does everything the normal workflow that Expo does, just cherry picking which features to use from each CLI.

[ElielC]

All that being said there is already support for module federation on metro: facebook/metro#1480
with CLI support on it`s way as i understand