React-native: Why does RN 0.43 use React 16.0.0-alpha

[xareelee]

I did not find docs about this question.

The latest stable version of React is 15.5.0. I did not find any docs about React 16.0.0-alpha. What are the major changes?

I have many libs depending on React 15.x. May I use React 15.5.0 instead of 16.0.0-alpha with RN 0.43.x?

[mobinni]

I believe this was answered in #13291

[CodeXtinction]

yes -_-

[email protected] requires a peer of react@>=15.4.0 but none was installed.

[ide]

This is intentional because React Native is released on a monthly cycle and uses the code from Facebook's trunk, which was using React 16 alpha 6 at the time of creating the release branch.

I have many libs depending on React 15.x. May I use React 15.5.0 instead of 16.0.0-alpha with RN 0.43.x?

No, RN 0.43 works only with React 16.0.0-alpha.6. Use that precise version.

[email protected] requires a peer of react@>=15.4.0 but none was installed.

This is a nonsensical warning from npm/yarn. There's an issue open on the Yarn repo to improve these warnings (16.0.0-alpha.6 does potentially satisfy >=15.4.0 according to the semver document, it's just that the node-semver library that chooses not to).

[bensampaio]

This doesn't make any sense... Why release stable versions dependent on alpha versions? Either release React 16.0.0 or stick to 15.x I would say.

[kesha-antonov]

I agree with @bensampaio .
Few libraries do not use react alpha for now so I cannot update RN.

[xareelee]

The problem is that many libs depending on React are not going to update the React dependency to 16.0.0-alpha.

This will raise some errors when testing. See https://github.com/storybooks/storybook/issues/893.

Please try to convince other open-source developers to update the React dependency by adding more docs.

[mleduque]

https://github.com/airbnb/enzyme/issues/928#issuecomment-301512728