Update react-native-vision-camera to the latest version

[hannojg]

We are using quite an outdated version of react-native-vision-camera in expensify. There are two patches to make it work with the new arch, however none of these patches have been forwarded upstream yet.

We are using 4.0.0-beta.13, latest is 4.5.3

The latest version of react-native-vision-camera has lots of performance and stability improvements. Plus we have additional maintenance overhead due to the patches (and we are about to add a third one here)

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @hannojg

[hannojg]

cc @mountiny Is that something that we can work on?

[mountiny]

@hannojg yeah lets do that, can we remove all the patches (merge the fixes upstream) as part of that?

[hannojg]

Yes, thats the goal!

[mountiny]

@hannojg can you breakdown the next steps here and what is the eta for them? Would someone else from Margelo work on it?

[hannojg]

We've already started working on that one. As we have to consider new arch & old arch support, it might take a moment longer (its not just applying the patches we have in expensify, but making sure its compatible for all arch types).

Main work is happening here:

• [WIP] feat: new arch support mrousavy/react-native-vision-camera#3250

There are a few other PRs however that will be needed:

• fix: events in bridgeless mode mrousavy/react-native-vision-camera#3240
• chore(example): upgrade to RN 0.75.4 mrousavy/react-native-vision-camera#3243

My ETA would be end of this week!

[mountiny]

Ok thanks!

[hannojg]

Short status update:

• I have prepared the vision camera repo to be prepared for the upgrade (example app latest RN version, proper mono repo setup > otherwise we would get build errors later on when turning on new arch)
• Working on the Fabric ComponentView

I currently ran into a bug with react-native-codegen, where it generates broken code (it must be a . instead of , here):

For expensify this wasn't happening with the current patch as the codegen spec used in the patch is slightly incorrect.
I either have to fix this upstream in react native, or just ship a hard copy of the codegen files with VisionCamera (wouldn't like to do that; easy to break).

That being said, i am not sure if the ETA of EoW is realistic. I think more like beginning of next week!

[hannojg]

Created an issue here, looking into it:

• [iOS] Codegen: Generates broken code for event emitter with nested objects in arrays facebook/react-native#47113

(The problem is that if this gets fixed in react native it will only be available in later versions. For expensify that could mean to just use another patch for reach native. However, its not really viable to ask all VisionCamera users to patch their react native. Due to that i am leaning towards shipping a fixed copy of the codegen code with VisionCamera for now)

[mountiny]

agreed, the fixed copy sounds reasonable until this is fixed

[mountiny]

going to make it weekly

[hannojg]

Update:

• The iOS part is mostly done and working

Todo:

• iOS fix remaining use cases (code scanner, FP)
• Hard copy codegen code to avoid bug
• bridge android

I am sure that i will finish those items by the end of this week, however Marc is currently OOO and I will need his final review (+ he is the only one who can do a release).
So with review + testing i would assume that this lands next week!

[Meanwhile i will open a PR that uses vision camera from the current development branch for testing in expensify!]

[mountiny]

thanks for an update

[hannojg]

Started a PR here:

• [WIP] Upgrade react native vision camera #51638 (uses a unreleased version of vision camera)

iOS part is ready, now fixing up the android part

Once everything is ready we will test some more and publish a new version that we then can use in newdot!

[hannojg]

Okay, android is working as well now. Waiting for @mrousavy to come back from OOO to finalise tmrw!

[hannojg]

We have come to the conclusion that the code we need to introduce to vision camera for FabricComponents using codegen doesn't meet our quality barrier.
Proper new arch support for vision camera will be added when we migrate it to nitro modules.

(See discussion here)

[chrispader]

@hannojg just to let you know, others want to upgrade VisionCamera in another PR: #51761 (comment)

[melvin-bot]

This issue has not been updated in over 15 days. @hannojg, @mountiny eroding to Monthly issue.

P.S. Is everyone reading this sure this is really a near-term priority? Be brave: if you disagree, go ahead and close it out. If someone disagrees, they'll reopen it, and if they don't: one less thing to do!

[mountiny]

I think we can close this now, we just updated the library

Once the library will be migrated to nitro we can handle that in a specific issue