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A monthly release cadence for React Native

42 points| evv | 9 years ago |facebook.github.io | reply

21 comments

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[+] pps|9 years ago|reply
Hi guys, do you know if it is possible to create home screen widgets with React Native? I don't see any info about it in docs. I'm thinking about something complex, like calendar or HabitHub widgets https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rstudioz.h...
[+] mewwts|9 years ago|reply
React Native is great. Hands down, so cool to be able to go from developing websites to native apps. I also appreciate reading the release notes and seeing new features and fixes being released so frequently.

I do however experience real issues when upgrading. We tried going from 0.38 to 0.39, but getting the xcode project files to merge correctly has proved difficult for us, a couple of newbies. The new react-native-git-upgrade makes it easier to see the conflicts, but it is still hard for us to make it work. Does HN have any wisdom to share?

[+] ariabuckles|9 years ago|reply
My workflow so far (pre react-native-git-upgrade) has been to `git commit`, then run `react-native upgrade` and say yes to all the prompts, and then afterwards manually `git add -p` the changes that react native wanted to make to my files (the proposed changes made them "standard" and got rid of customizations, but also upgraded legacy parts from the original templates).

For each change, then, I try to upgrade any react-specific code while preserving my own changes to that file.

It's certainly cumbersome and I avoid doing it too often, but I've found this manageable.

[+] k__|9 years ago|reply
Did the transition from React to React Native get easier on Android?

Last time I checkes, there was still rather much mobile know-how needed :/

[+] colinramsay|9 years ago|reply
RN is great but it disturbs me that this bug:

https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/4968

Which is severe but has been open for so long just hasn't had any attention from the core team. It's clearly a massive problem and the packager code is... less than friendly.

[+] dean177|9 years ago|reply
Its something which has a simple workaround, has no runtime impact and affects a minority(?) of developers using RN.

While it may be frustrating if this is affecting you, its certainly not a severe issue.

I have been part of development teams for two react-native apps, and nobody on either team has encountered this issue yet (with developers working on a a combination of OSX & Windows 10)

[+] evv|9 years ago|reply
I came across this issue last week and alerted the internal packager team about it. We'll get it resolved- even if the issue is avoidable, we can help people avoid it with better tooling, errors, and documentation.
[+] swah|9 years ago|reply
I'm trying RN now and I must say that for an outsider its very underwhelming, because one might expect more stuff to just work out of the box (surprises the last few minutes: back button not always handled, material design is a plugin, authentication doesn't have an example, etc).
[+] raspasov|9 years ago|reply
I disagree. From 0 to production, it took me 1 month. I had never done a mobile app before. Granted, I did have React experience on the web - that certainly helps.

I agree that the documentation can be better. My advice is - either contribute, or read the code. You'd be surprised how well commented and documented the code itself is.

Handling things like authentication would be falling into the trap of doing too much. A UI library/framework is an orthogonal concept to handling user registration or authentication. Material design? Let's say I don't like material design - then it'll be just extra baggage.

[+] throwaway91111|9 years ago|reply
Any plans to extend beyond mobile? I'm skittish to commit to a framework before it gets desktop support.
[+] evv|9 years ago|reply
Facebook is primarily focused on making React Native work great on iOS and Android. But the community is absolutely moving towards full cross-platform support. Windows is already supported, and there are promising experiments to run RN on Ubuntu, macOS, and web.