How can I resolve "Unable to talk to your watchman" errors

Question

I created an issue with Facebook/react-native a couple of days ago, but I have yet to receive a response. In order to try to get me up and running I'm going to ask here as well. issue link

I checked other SO posts concerning this matter and none of the suggestions helped.

I'm following the getting started documentation for Mac/iOS to create the AwesomeProject sample application. When I start the project using

npx react-native start

and build the iOS application in Xcode, the app launches (in the simulator) to show a white splash screen with "Loading from Metro..." at the top. After about a minute, I get the following error:

Could not connect to development server.

Ensure the following:
- Node server is running and available on the same network - run 'npm start' from react-native root
- Node server URL is correctly set in AppDelegate
- WiFi is enabled and connected to the same network as the Node Server

URL: http://localhost:8081/index.bundle?platform=ios&dev=true&minify=false&modulesOnly=false&runModule=true&app=org.reactjs.native.example.AwesomeProject

In the terminal where I started the server, I see:

2021-11-13T16:46:53,199: [cli] unable to talk to your watchman on /usr/local/var/run/watchman/chrisluxoft-state/sock! (No such file or directory)

Watchman:  watchman --no-pretty get-sockname returned with exit code=1, signal=null, stderr= 2021-11-13T16:46:53,199: [cli] unable to talk to your watchman on /usr/local/var/run/watchman/chrisluxoft-state/sock! (No such file or directory)

I navigated to

/usr/local/var/run/watchman/chrisluxoft-state/

and there were no files in the directory.

I ran

watchman --foreground --logfile=[pathtodesktop]/log.txt

as suggested here, which produced the following log:

2021-11-13T16:49:35,574: [listener] Watchman 2021.11.08.00 <no build info set> starting up on Grey-Mac.local
2021-11-13T16:49:35,581: [listener] file limit is 2560 kern.maxfilesperproc=49152
2021-11-13T16:49:35,581: [listener] raised file limit to 49152
2021-11-13T16:49:35,581: [listener] launchd checkin failed: No such process
2021-11-13T16:49:35,582: [sanitychecks] starting sanityCheckThread

When I went back to

/usr/local/var/run/watchman/chrisluxoft-state/

I see that there are now two files: pid & sock=

Encouraged by this, I restart the process and rebuild the app in Xcode. Same results, only this time the error in terminal is:

2021-11-13T16:56:49,310: [cli] unable to talk to your watchman on /usr/local/var/run/watchman/chrisluxoft-state/sock! (Connection refused)

Watchman:  watchman --no-pretty get-sockname returned with exit code=1, signal=null, stderr= 2021-11-13T16:56:49,310: [cli] unable to talk to your watchman on /usr/local/var/run/watchman/chrisluxoft-state/sock! (Connection refused)

Again looking at

/usr/local/var/run/watchman/chrisluxoft-state/

I see the same two files. I'm expecting there to be a log file, but it is not there.

This is on a Mac with multiple user accounts, if that makes a difference (i.e. permissions).

node, react-native, watchman were installed by Homebrew. I used the same user account for installation and execution.

react-native info

System:
    OS: macOS 11.6.1
    CPU: (12) x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700B CPU @ 3.20GHz
    Memory: 1.65 GB / 32.00 GB
    Shell: 3.2.57 - /bin/bash
  Binaries:
    Node: 17.0.1 - /usr/local/bin/node
    Yarn: 1.22.17 - /usr/local/bin/yarn
    npm: 8.1.0 - /usr/local/bin/npm
    Watchman: 2021.11.08.00 - /usr/local/bin/watchman
  Managers:
    CocoaPods: 1.11.2 - /Volumes/WD_Internal/chrisluxoft/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.7.4/bin/pod
  SDKs:
    iOS SDK:
      Platforms: iOS 15.0, DriverKit 20.4, macOS 11.3, tvOS 15.0, watchOS 8.0
    Android SDK: Not Found
  IDEs:
    Android Studio: 2020.3 AI-203.7717.56.2031.7784292
    Xcode: 13.0/13A233 - /usr/bin/xcodebuild
  Languages:
    Java: 11.0.12 - /usr/bin/javac
  npmPackages:
    @react-native-community/cli: Not Found
    react: 17.0.2 => 17.0.2
    react-native: 0.66.3 => 0.66.3
    react-native-macos: Not Found
  npmGlobalPackages:
    *react-native*: Not Found

Answer 1

Mackbook always ask permission to access our documents folder and if you want provide it, then you will get this above error. Sol... Just close all tabs and restart your PC . Then system will automatically ask permissions to access internal files.