
A monthly release cadence for React Native - evv
http://facebook.github.io/react-native/blog/2017/01/07/monthly-release-cadence.html
======
pps
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...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rstudioz.habits)

~~~
evv
This isn't supported yet, but if you care about it, you can upvote the feature
request on product pains:

[https://productpains.com/post/react-native/android-home-
scre...](https://productpains.com/post/react-native/android-home-screen-
widget)

This will help the core team know what should be prioritized!

~~~
pps
Thank you!

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orta
This is great, I work on a pretty big React Native app (
[http://artsy.github.io/series/react-native-at-
artsy/](http://artsy.github.io/series/react-native-at-artsy/) ) and keeping up
to date with the latest version of React Native has been pretty tough when
competing with product-based work items.

We're still on 0.34 (
[https://github.com/artsy/emission/blob/master/yarn.lock#L484...](https://github.com/artsy/emission/blob/master/yarn.lock#L4849)
) now I feel guilty.

Glad to see the project start to stabilize.

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mewwts
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?

~~~
k__
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 :/

~~~
sheeshkebab
React Native doesn't abstract mobile frameworks, so you still need to learn it
all as far as iOS UIKit and Android SDK (and also learn React Native stuff on
top of it).

That said, there is something about coding in mostly one language (javascript)
vs 2 or 3 (Objc/Swift/Android) and also have that live app reloading.

In any case, this react stuff is not for beginners and won't make learning
mobile platforms easier - you will still need to put in obligatory 10k hours
to get good at mobile dev...

~~~
roboguy12
Aside from the live reloading and being able to write in javascript as opposed
to Swift/Java, the development paradigms of React is just better, IMO. The
component-based design patterns and event-dispatching-based control flow just
make so much more sense to me than the traditional Android/iOS way of doing
things (I have experience in both the web and mobile). It's easier to test,
easier to read/write, and easier to reason about. This is just opinion of
course, others may not feel the same.

------
colinramsay
RN is great but it disturbs me that this bug:

[https://github.com/facebook/react-
native/issues/4968](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
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)

------
swah
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
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.

~~~
swah
Thanks for the heads up - I'll continue investigating. I'm thinking about my
fav. Android apps (No iPhone since 3gs here) and really, some are material
(say Recurrence, Gmail) and most are not (Waze, Pocketcasts..).

------
throwaway91111
Any plans to extend beyond mobile? I'm skittish to commit to a framework
before it gets desktop support.

~~~
evv
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.

