[0.66] react-native-fs does not properly link even though it seems to have windows

[dannyvv]

Problem Description

I'm trying to add react-native-fs to my app and it fails with:

yarn run v1.22.10
$ react-native run-windows
 × Auto-linking...
Error: Autolinking: Found a Windows solution for react-native-fs but no React Native for Windows native module projects. (60ms)
 × Autolinking failed. Found a Windows solution for react-native-fs but no React Native for Windows native module projects
Re-run the command with --logging for more information
Your session id was 2f42fdba9056fa42b126c6d51c8dca85
error Command failed with exit code 305.
info Visit https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/run for documentation about this command.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Follow instructions to create new rnw app
2. yarn add react-native-fs
3. yarn windows

Expected Results

my app to build and use the fs library

CLI version

6.1.0

Environment

info Fetching system and libraries information...
System:
    OS: Windows 10 10.0.22000
    CPU: (16) x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900 CPU @ 3.10GHz
    Memory: 51.26 GB / 63.84 GB
  Binaries:
    Node: 12.19.0 - C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.EXE
    Yarn: 1.22.10 - ~\AppData\Roaming\npm\yarn.CMD
    npm: 6.14.8 - C:\Program Files\nodejs\npm.CMD
    Watchman: Not Found
  SDKs:
    Android SDK: Not Found
    Windows SDK:
      AllowDevelopmentWithoutDevLicense: Enabled
      AllowAllTrustedApps: Enabled
      Versions: 10.0.18362.0, 10.0.19041.0
  IDEs:
    Android Studio: Version  4.1.0.0 AI-201.8743.12.41.7042882
    Visual Studio: 16.11.31702.278 (Visual Studio Enterprise 2019)
  Languages:
    Java: 16.0.2
  npmPackages:
    @react-native-community/cli: Not Found
    react: Not Found
    react-native: Not Found
    react-native-windows: Not Found
  npmGlobalPackages:
    *react-native*: Not Found

Target Platform Version

No response

Target Device(s)

No response

Visual Studio Version

Visual Studio 2019

Build Configuration

Debug

Snack, code example, screenshot, or link to a repository

 i Verbose: ON
⠋ Auto-linking...
Parsing project...
Found Windows app project, config:
{
  folder: 'd:\\src\\hack2\\packages\\TrackMyWork',
  sourceDir: 'windows',
  solutionFile: 'trackmywork.sln',
  project: {
    projectFile: 'trackmywork\\trackmywork.vcxproj',
    projectName: 'trackmywork',
    projectLang: 'cpp',
    projectGuid: '{42106539-d294-47ef-b3d0-48f6a27e4a20}'
  },
  experimentalFeatures: {
    UseHermes: 'false',
    UseWinUI3: 'false',
    UseExperimentalNuget: 'false'
  }
}
Parsing dependencies...
react-native-fs has Windows implementation, config:
{
  folder: 'd:\\src\\hack2\\node_modules\\react-native-fs',
  projects: [],
  solutionFile: 'RNFS.sln',
  nugetPackages: [],
  sourceDir: 'windows'
}
 × Auto-linking...
Error: Autolinking: Found a Windows solution for react-native-fs but no React Native for Windows native module projects. (69ms)
 × Autolinking failed. Found a Windows solution for react-native-fs but no React Native for Windows native module projects

[asklar]

this is by design, I think; the package from react-native-fs is using the old (WPF) based RNW, which will not work with "vNext". There's a PR that avmoroz sent many months ago, but the repo owner has not merged it, see itinance/react-native-fs#952.

[NickGerleman]

Wpf libs vs RNW has caused folks confusion before. Can we make the CLI provide actionable errors if we encounter the WPF libs?

[dannyvv]

That would be nice....

[asklar]

It would be great if we had a reliable way to identify such projects, but that doesn't seem to be the case, at least not for react-native-fs