On top of that my question to the OP would be, why do they need to search around for libraries that are older than RN. In a team of 10 you can most likely create your own ones, or fork already made libraries and upgrade them to fit your purpose. One of the greatest things with RN so far for my team has been that we can actually write native components and bridge them.
Yes RN is changing quite fast in general and most libraries out there might not fit your exact purpose, but I find it quite easy to integrate what I need in our app. (Team of 3, been on production for 8 months, its pretty alright so far)
The main problem we're having is that newer versions of RN use React 16. React 16 has breaking changes, particularly the changes to PropTypes and createClass, which some of our dependencies have already fixed but others haven't. This means to upgrade RN, we need to either submit fixes for all these libs or use a version of RN which still uses React 15, both of which have their own problems, especially since React 16 is still a release candidate and not a full release.
We're not creating our own libraries for a couple of reasons: firstly, this was supposed to be a quick project to see if an app is viable (but has now lasted long enough that we've run into this issue), and secondly we've already got forks of key libraries, which is taking more time away from implementing actual features since we now need to maintain them and pull in updates from the original repos.
Yes we should have kept dependencies up-to-date, but constant breaking changes are just taking too much time away from development time, so it's not a good fit for our project as it stands.
I don't think you are supposed to make a production RN app out of the bat, by just using 3rd party dependencies.
RN isn't wordpress where someone can employ you and say I want this and that and then you go off install 50 plugins and thats it, your project is completed.
If you are installing a lot of RN 3rd party dependencies for a production environment then you are doing it wrong.
The best thing RN has to offer is being able to write React for parts and write Native code for heavy tasks.
You do need to go down and write your own components natively, sure if someone has done it before and its well maintained and you tested it and works for you then fine use that library, if not then don't install it but make your own.
For js components only components, then again if its very well maintained then use it, but nothing stops you for making the component that works for you.
RN is a bit less work than writing a Native app, but not too far apart. It's not meant to be for webviews and for people that just want to make a complex production app using 3rd party dependencies in very little time.
Its meant for dev teams that JS is their main language but do have someone that has an understanding of native code.
it depends, on my app I don't use Stripe so can't speak for its sdk, but I do use FB. At start I was using react-native-fbsdk but found that it was very limited and when I submitted a PR and went through the NDA procedure with facebook etc, then they delayed putting my PR which was fixing an issue out. I decided it would be easier for myself to bridge facebook's sdk, and so I did which was helpful as I've added quite more features to it which the react-native-fbsdk isn't providing.
That said it always depends on your usage and if it fits your purpose, but I wouldn't rely on 3rd party devs to solve my issues.
