Getting "java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: couldn't find DSO to load: libhermes.so" error

Question

I'm in the process of migrating a React Native project from react-native version 0.58.5 to 0.60.4.

For the Android part I've done all the changes mentioned here

I let Hermes disabled in my app build.gradle file:

project.ext.react = [
    entryFile: "index.js",
    enableHermes: false,  // clean and rebuild if changing
]
...
def jscFlavor = 'org.webkit:android-jsc:+'
def enableHermes = project.ext.react.get("enableHermes", false);
...
dependencies {
    ...

    if (enableHermes) {
      println 'Hermes is enabled'
      def hermesPath = "../../node_modules/hermesvm/android/";
      debugImplementation files(hermesPath + "hermes-debug.aar")
      releaseImplementation files(hermesPath + "hermes-release.aar")
    } else {
      println 'Hermes is disabled'
      implementation jscFlavor
    }
}
...

I can see the Hermes is disabled print at build time. And this is exactly what I want.

When launching the Android app with react-native run-android I get the following crash at startup :

FATAL EXCEPTION: create_react_context
E  Process: com.reactnativetestapp, PID: 21038
E  java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: couldn't find DSO to load: libhermes.so
E      at com.facebook.soloader.SoLoader.doLoadLibraryBySoName(SoLoader.java:738)
E      at com.facebook.soloader.SoLoader.loadLibraryBySoName(SoLoader.java:591)
E      at com.facebook.soloader.SoLoader.loadLibrary(SoLoader.java:529)
E      at com.facebook.soloader.SoLoader.loadLibrary(SoLoader.java:484)
E      at com.facebook.hermes.reactexecutor.HermesExecutor.<clinit>(HermesExecutor.java:20)
E      at com.facebook.hermes.reactexecutor.HermesExecutorFactory.create(HermesExecutorFactory.java:27)
E      at com.facebook.react.ReactInstanceManager$5.run(ReactInstanceManager.java:949)
E      at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:764)

After some research I could see this crash occurs for people wanting to enable Hermes and that has a wrong gradle configuration : [0.60.3] App crash on startup when enabling Hermes (enableHermes: true)

Why am I getting this crash while Hermes is disabled?

Note that when setting enableHermes to true no crash occurs.

Answer 1

I solved this problem by a tiny change after doing this steps in this article

https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/25415

Then make sure to add this jsc-android block to your android/build.gradle:

allprojects {
    repositories {
        mavenLocal()
        maven {
            // All of React Native (JS, Obj-C sources, Android binaries) is installed from npm
            url("$rootDir/../node_modules/react-native/android")
        }

        //THIS ONE
        maven {
            // Android JSC is installed from npm
            url("$rootDir/../node_modules/jsc-android/dist")
        }

        google()
        jcenter()
    }
}