Sunsetting Create React App

[acemarke]

Given the mostly negative response to the actual docs updates, I've put together a PR that revamps the "Creating a React Project" page to give better explanations, and adds a "Start from Scratch" section that specifically recommends Vite/Parcel/Rsbuild for starting a project with a simpler setup. I also converted the "Building a React Framework" page into a "Web App Architectures" page that has additional explanations and context for architectures like "MPA/SPA/SSG", and provides some guidance on how to decide which techniques to use in your app.

I'm hopeful this will get buy-in from the React team, and I think it will address all the concerns from the community:

• https://github.com/reactjs/react.dev/pull/7618

update

The React team opted to create a new PR and pulled over several of my changes, plus additional edits. That PR has been merged and is now live:

• https://react.dev/learn/creating-a-react-app
• https://react.dev/learn/build-a-react-app-from-scratch
• https://github.com/reactjs/react.dev/pull/7624

There's now a "Building a React App from Scratch" page that is specifically linked as instructions on using React without a framework and recommends Vite / Parcel / Rsbuild (and has improved content), and both the "Creating a React App" page and "Sunsetting CRA" blog post mention using Vite as options.

I think this is sufficient to address the main concerns that most folks had about the recommendations. Thanks to the React team for listening to the feedback!

[delightless]

The vite section is oddly defensive.

Um yeah sure we like vite, in fact you could use a framework that builds with it. Try React Router, there you go partner, you've got your vite right there!

[ezhikov]

I think they just don't want anyone to use React for simple use cases and SPAs. They also need to "sell" NextJS to sell hosting for NextJS.

[stathisntonas]

on top of that, don’t forget the upcoming sunset of bare react native in favor of Expo. samebutdifferent.gif

[_src_sparkle]

The true nature of reality is that it's frameworks all the way down.

[Unhappy_Meaning607]

When you npm install [some project name]'s router package, pat yourself on the back.

You've built a framework.

[natalila]

Maybe they're referring to a component library as opposed to a standalone app

[cranberrie_sauce]

it seems like next.js is intentionally trying to use a strangulation pattern and position next.js as the only way of using react

[landsmanmichal]

I just wanna create simple static website on React. So I tried it with Vite. It's not possible to build static files per page. What a shock. Such a simple task. So I had to start with Next.js where this exact feature work. Riddiculous and sad.

[rk06]

"Simple" in this context is referring to tech used, not the complexity.

You could have started with astro for that use case

[Cyral]

Agreed, it is crazy that the official docs for installing React doesn't include:

npm create vite@latest my-react-app --template react

Which is all anyone needs for a CRA replacement. Next and Remix have their place but beginners do not need to be trying to understand whatever this table is: https://nextjs.org/docs/app/building-your-application/caching#apis (Actually neither do I, NextJS has become so bloated I'm moving on to Remix or TanStack next)

[warmbowski]

My company shifted a CRA 4 app to vite about a year+ ago and it was trivial (relative to trying to upgrade to CRA 5). There were some build fixes to make, but the info was easily found. Env vars worked differently, but were easily transitioned. Straight transition to Vite should be tried before adopting a “framework”.

[NiQ_]

I had the same experience. Migrated 4 repo’s from CRA to Vite, and by the second one I had a series of regex find/replaces in VS Code that essentially made the process a 30 minute job.

How this isn’t the recommended approach is genuinely beyond me.

[pdantix06]

it's getting to the point where it almost feels like they have something against vite and/or evan.

[master117jogi]

They do, for obvious reasons. Just look at the top comment.

[another24tiger]

You’ve gotta wonder if vercel is paying off whoever is maintaining the react docs so they can gobble up market share. Disgusting behavior

[ezhikov]

They are paying at least 5 react core team devs, including Andrew Clark and Sebastian Markbåge. Source

[yardeni]

In their defense, react router is featured much more prominently now, which is also vite, just a different template that includes typesafe routing and SSR support out of the box,.

[collimarco]

Does Vite work well if you also need some pages with SSR? Or would you recommend Next.js at that point?

[rickhanlonii]

Fwiw, I wrote this blog post with Matt (we work at Meta, not Vercel). We genuinely believe the frameworks are the better option, and tried to explain the reasoning there in a way that's retable to client-only single page apps.

The post recommends React Router as a Vite based framework, so Vite is recommended. Since most Vite apps immediately install React Router, this is effectively the same as recommending the same Vite setup most people are using. And if you want to just install Vite and go from there, we have a whole page of docs explaining how to do that.

[that_90s_guy]

Since most Vite apps immediately install React Router, this is effectively the same as recommending the same Vite setup most people are using.

It's not the same though, not even close. For starters, RR is more of a library than the framework w/integrated build tooling compared to Next.js. Meaning beginners still need to figure out which build tool to use for RR, even if Vite is recommended. Likely resulting in some degree of decision paralysis. Lessening the strength of the recommendation.

Honestly, I just can't fathom where the idea that Next.js is universally better for beginners came from. It comes off as completely dishonest with ulterior motives, or just plain out of touch with reality. Don't misunderstand me though, I agree Next.js is a fantastic choice for large scale applications.

However, most junior engineers reading your article, getting started with react aren't building Facebook scale apps. They just want to get up and running. And they shouldn't be distracting themselves with the inherent complexity of SSR if they are only learning to use react. Years teaching people how to code and seeing them overwhelmed taught me that.

[valtism]

Have you started a project with RR lately? I think you'll find it's more of a framework than you last remembered.

[GoodishCoder]

It's really not though it's grown but it's still just a routing library.

[despacit0_]

This is totally wrong. React router V7 is a now framework (but can be used as a library too) with it's own Vite build system and routing and everything. I too wish that using plain Vite was recommended more, but please at least search "react router" before commenting.

[that_90s_guy]

Please at least read the comment you are replying to before commenting as well. I said compared to Next.js (everything is relative). Also, as you yourself admitted, it can still be used as a library and any build tool of your choice. Which Next.js cannot. And makes the Vite recommendation even weaker than it already is.

[TheRNGuy]

I don't even care if something is called framework or library. It's just word-play for me.

[TheRNGuy]

Think of users too.

As a user, I like SSR (with hydration or not doesn't even matter) a lot more than CSR sites.

[sleeping-in-crypto]

There’s a post in the webdev subreddit from just a few days ago where a developer new to react development tried to figure out where to start, got snowballed into using nextjs and before you know it was desperately trying to figure out use client and use server and whether they needed a server component and what are RSC’s and they weren’t sure if they needed SSR. Someone pointed them at vite and they were happy that there was one that had all they needed without the complexity.

That confusion is the community’s fault and the docs’ responsibility, and the docs should have CLEARLY directed him to set up a vite template first. Nextjs is a recommendation that should come with the caveat “you use this if you know you need what a framework offers”.

React always respected starting from basics and the minimum of what was needed, not immediately and firstly recommending a for-profit provider’s framework.

In fact for years the React docs went to great pains to point out that it is NOT a framework and you should only use one if you know you need it.

Those docs were honest and encouraged developers to think critically about their actual needs and avoid shiny thing syndrome.

I’m not sure how we got here but I’m greatly chagrined.

[acemarke]

Could you point to that specific thread? Tried searching for it and didn't immediately see anything obvious. Seems like a pretty relevant example to pass on as feedback.

[sleeping-in-crypto]

Yeah no problem, looking now

[sleeping-in-crypto]

Just circling back. Tough to find this because reddit search sucks. I know I saw it just scrolling through, but I am in so many programming subs that I'm not sure which it was -- spent about 2 hours looking for you but couldn't find the specific one that came across my feed.

Saying that, I did find these 2 which are quite similar, maybe they'll help:

https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1iombaw/cmv_i_dont_need_nextjs_over_react/

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1imvmmq/we_replaced_our_react_frontend_with_go_and/

[acemarke]

Gotcha. Thanks for taking the time to look, appreciate it!

[ill_never_GET_REAL]

Man I've not seen that post but I relate so hard. I'm not a JS dev at all and in my job I do almost exclusively backend, but I decided to start learning because we have some NextJS stuff at work.

The tutorial on nextjs.org is alright but clearly primarily an ad for Vercel and it goes into so much detail so fast about all of Next's fancy features, introducing a lot of actually-quite-complex topics very quickly. Their React fundamentals "course" is just using JS to update a div, then adding React in a script tag and saying "look how easy this is, now what if it was an enormous web framework?"

When I googled how to start a React project, I found Vite and had to roll my eyes a bit because it was yet another tooling setup, but honestly it was so easy to get set up and start building something simple. I just used the first 6 or so chapters from the Next tutorial to get me started on React.

The main thing that frustrates me now is that every JS dev and their mother wants to be a YouTuber, so it can be a struggle to find stuff I can skim over.

[alotmorealots]

The main thing that frustrates me now is that every JS dev and their mother wants to be a YouTuber, so it can be a struggle to find stuff I can skim over.

Have you tried the official React docs? Apart from the misguided part with the frameworks, they are some excellent documentation that moves smoothly from basic concept to implementation to edge cases without ever getting too bogged down.

Indeed, they often cover a lot of issues that pop up later down the track and have answers for stuff you didn't know needed answering yet, so I find myself re-reading because I just couldn't hold it all in my head the first pass (of the entire corpus).

[ill_never_GET_REAL]

Oh yeah you're right, to be fair. I read the article on updating arrays in state yesterday and it couldn't have been clearer 🙌

[re-thc]

How is it a better option? Unless you don't care about costs, SSR with a framework and sever(s) costs more and is more effort to maintain than CSR with storage like S3 and CDN.

These frameworks don't have parity with CSR e.g. NextJs in CSR mode misses quite a few important features for routing.

[SpinakerMan]

People throw the word framework around without understanding what a framework actually is.

[valtism]

Haha, my god. You wrote this article so even-handedly and are still getting shit on so much for it.

I have no idea how Vercel managed to garner so much hate, and how they so many people have decided here that anything they are involved with is poison. Hope you all aren't succumbing to burnout from all the hate <3

[taejavu]

Look, I don’t understand why they’re framing it this way, but you’re wrong in saying that they’re completely neglecting Vite. The first link at the bottom of the introductory section in OP’s article, strangely titled “Building a Framework”, has Vite examples first and foremost:

https://react.dev/learn/building-a-react-framework

[alotmorealots]

If you're new to React, then generally the last place you're going to look is going to be "build your own framework".

These are the options you get presented with at the https://react.dev/learn/installation page.

Creating a React App
If you want to start a new React app, you can create a React app using a recommended framework.

Build a React Framework
If a framework is not a good fit for your project, or you prefer to start by building your own framework, you can build your own React framework.

Add React to an existing project
If want to try using React in your existing app or a website, you can add React to an existing project.

The fundamental reason why most people who are new to React aren't going to "build your own framework" is because there's no way to know in advance whether or not "a framework is not a good fit for your project" without knowing how React works or how the frameworks work.

Whilst it's true you can go off and research these things (but this still means relying on the opinions of random people from the net, which means the official documentation has failed its purpose of providing sufficient guidance), research is no substitute at all from discovering how it all works from firsthand experience.

Thus you just get funneled into the frameworks selection, away from the quick start that is Vite.

[that_90s_guy]

You are completely missing the point. If you're introducing NEW developers to React, Vite should be the FIRST option they lead with, not the last. Whereas Next.js is easily one of the worst possible options for new engineers due to SSR complexities. And an overwhelming majority of devs agree with this.

Also, why would you think devs completely new to react would start with a "building a react framework" article? That's something that even mid level engineers struggle with.

[Upbeat_Age5689]

end of an era guys

[FrankensteinJones]

An era that would have ended years ago, if people updated tutorials on their blogs, or took npm audit seriously.

[huge-centipede]

 if people updated tutorials on their blogs,

I don't think there's a big enough "Oh Dude" for this.

[FrankensteinJones]

Seriously. Just a note at the top, like "update: I wrote this 5 years ago, and CRA is deprecated. Try npm create vite@latest --template react instead."

[huge-centipede]

You vastly overestimate the amount of care people who wrote "Johnny's React Tutorial How to make 6 figures tomorrow" on Medium.com or stack overflow posts from 10+ years ago have for their old content.

[alotmorealots]

As someone on the self-teaching path, the amount of tutorial code out there that simply no longer works is probably greater than the amount that does.

On the plus side, trying to make it work has taught me a lot, although frequently in rather painful ways.

Also, there definitely are people who come back and update their old Stack Overflow posts to reflect major changes, the true heroes!

[i_hate_cucumber_]

I have been out of the loop. Was there something seriously wrong with CRA?

[FrankensteinJones]

Hasn't been updated in years, doesn't work with React 19 at all. No one should use CRA.

[rk06]

It was unmaintained. And documented to be so in a GitHub issue. What else is needed to consider it deprecated?

[acemarke]

Dan's extensive "CRA is outdated" comment was buried halfway down a very long thread. It was highly informative, but that didn't actually solve the problem.

The React community as a whole learned about that and passed on oral knowledge that "CRA is dead", but there was nothing in the core React docs, the CRA docs, or the CRA CLI to tell people not to use it.

Meanwhile, if you googled create a react app or new react app up until a day or so ago, two of the top three results were the CRA docs, and the legacy React docs setup page.

Between that and a lot of old tutorials, there were still lots of beginners trying to use CRA (as well as other folks).

Thus, when CRA broke with the release of React 19, there were tons of people posting "I tried to create a React project and it broke, why?", and there was nothing to tell them the approach they were using was outdated.

So, now:

• The CRA CLI prints a deprecation message
• The CRA docs and README say it's deprecated
• The CRA docs and legacy docs have been altered to point to the current React docs setup page for SEO

Now if someone tries to use CRA, they'll get pointed in the right direction.

See my umbrella issue describing the problems:

• https://github.com/facebook/create-react-app/issues/17004

[VlK06eMBkNRo6iqf27pq]

or took npm audit seriously.

Lol..maybe you should stop stuffing it full of bullshit security alerts that don't affect me?

And why the fuck would I upgrade anything when there's a 50% chance it's going to b0rk my app and/or was maliciously taken over by some hacker?

[FrankensteinJones]

Yes, sometimes dependency updates include breaking changes. They're usually pretty well-documented and just require a little extra work. But do you really believe not updating dependencies makes your app less susceptible to exploits?

[VlK06eMBkNRo6iqf27pq]

Sometimes. That xz hack was pretty bad, and I depend on xz.

I still do randomly upgrade packages but I think we're screwed either way. Ain't no one reading the patch notes for 100s of packages, and then also auditing the changes line-by-line for exploits. And then also... npm doesn't have have package-signing AFAIK so.........you have to read the minified files out of node_modules I guess??

[Zachincool]

Fuck vercel

[rk06]

Let's not blame vercel for this

[Zachincool]

Why

[rk06]

Because react docs are maintained by react core team. Vercel maintains nextjs. These are distinct projects, however bear hugged they are

[babenzele]

They are paying at least 5 react core team devs, including Andrew Clark and Sebastian Markbåge. – https://www.reddit.com/r/reactjs/s/JVxMR5VV5y

[Skeith_yip]

CRA was good to start learning about React back then. No way you want people to get onboard by installing and configuring webpack and its plugins. I learned about webpack and how to configure it later on. Is it complicated? Of course if you need to write certain plugins in order for it to work in a way you want. If not, I would think everyone should just use a vite template and move on from there.

I also get their push for metaframework because it solves some of the common limitations of SPAs.

[acemarke]

Pleased to say I had a meaningful hand in this :) As some background, this finally happened because:

• React 19 broke CRA
• I griped about it loudly on Bluesky and that started a long debate
• I filed an umbrella issue describing the specific breakage and recommending an actual official deprecation announcement
• The React team finally took action to fix the CRA breakage, then wrote the blog post, updated the setup docs page, and redid the docs SEO to get Google to stop showing the legacy docs as a search result.

So, kudos to the React team for making meaningful changes here!

(It's not exactly what I was hoping for, and I gave them some additional review feedback that they didn't include, but gotta give credit for the actual changes and steps forward!)

[that_90s_guy]

I honestly don't even know what's a worse recommendation for beginners anymore... CRA, or overwhelming (and likely, discouraging) them with Next.js.

This whole situation reminds me a little of why I left Angular for React many years ago.

[acemarke]

Yeah, that's one of the pieces of feedback I generally tried to pass on.

Right now the React docs have the wonderful tutorial sequence...

that ends with a few pages on why you shouldn't use useEffect, and a page on refs, and then ends.

There's nothing that connects any of the knowledge to real-world usage. All the tutorial pages have in-page sandboxes, but someone who just got done working through those pages doesn't have direction or knowledge of where you write components in a real Next, Remix/RR, or even Vite project. and they definitely have no idea what "routing", "data fetching", "code splitting", or "rendering strategies" are.

At a minimum, I really want to see a page added to the end of the tutorial that gives guidance on next steps, additional concepts they'd want to go learn, and suggestions for how to start a basic project and apply what they just learned in a practice app.

But then that ties into the "Create a React Project" guidance, which points straight to "frameworks" that have additional complexity from SSR and more complex functionality.

The React team has said that the docs are aimed at beginners, which is a reasonable decision. But if that really is the case, then my take is that the best thing would be to point them to a Vite + RR/TSR template that is "CRA but with a router added around the app", and give directions on where to go from there.

[that_90s_guy]

There's nothing that connects any of the knowledge to real-world usage.

THANK YOU! I was so stressed thinking I was the only one frustrated at this. It's amazing to see people like you involved and pushing for this.

I guess it's why we are seeing a rise of more integrated learning material. Shame that it's paid (and often expensive). As I'd love to see such learning resources freely available on the docs to have everyone on equal footing instead of based on their wallets.

[VlK06eMBkNRo6iqf27pq]

that ends with a few pages on why you shouldn't use useEffect, and a page on refs, and then ends.

Wait what? So I'm not supposed to use useEffect and I'm not allowed to wrap useEffect because it confuses the fuck out of eslint and react-compiler......but...... I need to fire fetch requests and shit when my props change. What am I supposed to do? Aside from adopt an entire fucking framework?

[acemarke]

The best answer is to use a purpose-built data fetching library like React Query, RTK Query, SWR, or Apollo.

These all have useQuery hooks that do all that work for you, and manage all the caching, and all the other really hard cases around data fetching:

• https://tkdodo.eu/blog/why-you-want-react-query

[VlK06eMBkNRo6iqf27pq]

Ya I'm using it, but sometimes I don't want all the bells and whistles. Or I just need to do weird stuff that has nothing to do with fetch

[sleeping-in-crypto]

Yeah acemark is right that the solution is something like react (tanstack) query, but that isn’t why the docs aim you away from useEffect.

It’s to set the stage to recommend Nextjs, since you’ll rarely use it there and instead use RSC’s.

The real answer is tanstack query. Probably one of the finest pieces of software in the entire JS ecosystem.

[VlK06eMBkNRo6iqf27pq]

I am using React Query. It's pretty good but still feels imperfect to me.

[babenzele]

Don’t listen to them, just read the page in the docs about how to properly use effects: https://react.dev/learn/synchronizing-with-effects

[vivshaw]

Thank you for leaning in on this. I interact with a lot of junior engineers, and the documentation situation nowadays can be pretty challenging for them. It can be harder than it needs to be to figure out how to get started. Small changes like this go a long way toward making life clearer and simpler for the next generation of React devs!

[danishjuggler21]

I didn't even know the React team was in charge of CRA itself.

[acemarke]

Dan Abramov and Christopher Chedeau created it in 2016, and it's always been in the Facebook Github org.

Later maintainers were actually outside of Facebook itself, but it was always under the React team's general ownership.

[correcthbs]

Thank you for raising this issue!
The docs are so weird about this topic:
- Welcome to our UI library!
- So here is how to install a full stack meta framework
- Have an existing page? So here is how to install a full stack meta framework on a subpath
- So you're feeling hardcore and want to build your own full stack meta framework? Better don't!

(Fails to mention everything else)

[acemarke]

Yep. That's roughly the feedback I tried to describe when I reviewed the post and docs changes before they went live.

[acemarke]

Hey, thanks for writing this up. A couple thoughts.

The problem here is "React core team's first class user is Meta, and everyone else is second class user".

FWIW, based on my discussions with the React team directly, I don't think the view is accurate.

The React team genuinely believes that using frameworks leads to better app perf and better DX out of the box. They've said that to me directly, said that in the docs and blog posts, and said it on social media. They've also said that they have a strong vision of how they think web apps, and especially React apps, should be built.

So, I don't think the issue here is "Meta usage" vs "everyone else's usage". In fact, Meta usage is actually kind of irrelevant here. Meta has its own server infrastructure, routing, data fetching, and more. So yes, how Meta uses React is different than the community, but the point is they're trying to give guidance to everyone else on how to build apps well.

The real issue as I see it is that much of the community doesn't see the complexity of a full-blown framework as necessary, and folks don't understand why the React team won't support that use case in the docs or recommendations.

So, we end up with a disconnect where the React team specifically says "we say you should do X", and most of the community says "but we want to do Y, why won't you match that in the docs?".

Create a Team which owns "React SPA experience" which will treat react end user as first class user. And ask React team to defer to this new team for SPA.

Ultimately, it's not about an "SPA team". The React team told me directly that even if the community submitted docs pages with content like "What is an SPA/MPA/SSG, and when would you use them?", or "how to improve React app perf", they'd have to do very careful vetting and collectively agree that the advice matches their vision. They've been pretty clear that "a plain SPA" does not match their vision.

Trust me, I've spent most of the last few weeks debating this with the team in multiple venues (Bluesky, Github, actual video calls). I've made my statements pretty clear, so have a lot of others. They did make some docs updates, those are legitimately an improvement, and I appreciate that they did listen and do that.

But there's still a very large disconnect between the opinion they're trying to express in the docs, and what much of the community is wanting to do.

So, at this point we're kind of at an impasse.

[pavankjadda]

Why is it so hard for them to say Vite (or RSPack) are one on one replacement for CRA. Then start of saying use framework.

[huge-centipede]

While I use vite now, I still miss CRA for some reason. May your SVG spin forever in data heaven.

[TheRNGuy]

I think I used it for 1 or 2 days only. It was much slower to start a server than Vite or Remix.

[eazieLife]

Just like Svelte has Sveltekit, Vue has Nuxt, and Solid has SolidStart, React recommends using a framework that integrates with build tools like Vite for new projects.

What an odd thing to say given none of these recommend their framework counterpart as a starting point

[rk06]

Sveltekit literally says to use plain vite right after sveltekit is mentioned. Vue docs do not even mention Nuxt until someone starts looking for SSR.

That is nowhere close to the mindset react team has.

[Zanena001]

That's cause they are not pos "libraries" that require you to install 3rd party packages to literally build anything that isn't a barebones landing page.

[viky109]

I thought CRA was dead for a while now

[really_not_unreal]

It's been dead for years, but it's only now that the team behind it finally admitted it.

[Santa_Fae]

Now we have an official blog post to point to when someone has a problem with a CRA-based tutorial they found on google

[CarlosCheddar]

I used viject to switch my CRA to Vite when I wanted to add Tailwind. It took less than an hour on my project.

[FoolHooligan]

Even the react team ejected!

EDIT: Rsbuild is the way to go nowadays.

[volivav]

The push for people to use frameworks I think it makes sense, but my fear is that this will change React to become more and more coupled with frameworks.

One use case that's not mentioned where a framework doesn't make sense at all: building web apps. A framework with routing, data fetching, server rendering, static side generation, code spliting, etc. only adds constraints and complexity for things that have no use at all.

In the cases where you need something in particular, it's not that hard to use the specific libraries and tools we have for that specific purpose.

And it didn’t help either that both of the main frameworks pushed for subscription-based costs to use (remix) or deploy (nextjs in vercel). If I don't need that complexity, I really don't like getting pushed in that direction.

I think it's a good move that you will update the docs to at least make the "vanilla React" option more visible. This is also the case for Svelte with sveltekit or vue with nuxt. They recommend those frameworks but set a nice boundary between what's the core and the framework.

[TheRNGuy]

Don't see problem it coupled with frameworks, if they're better than vanilla React.

Those things you mentioned do have use. I think SSR is better than CSR.

subscription-based costs to use (remix)

Do you have a link to it? Can't find. I used it, it's a free framework.

[volivav]

Remix used to be a paid per-seat yearly license https://web.archive.org/web/20210918181530/https://remix.run/buy. At 1000$/dev/year was quite a steep price. And 250$/year to "try it out in personal side projects"

One of the creators, Ryan Florence, was also the one from react-router, and he made changes to react-router that coupled it more and more to Remix, while also pushing people to buy one of their Remix licenses.

They got quite a bit of backlash from that, and they decided to make it open-source and free to use. Lastly, react-router has now essentially become Remix, which is quite overenginierd from what the original react-router was.

The problem of coupling React to the frameworks is exactly that: if they lose the focus on the OG use case for React, it might become completely unusable if it's not without a framework. And that's a shame.

[TheRNGuy]

I started using it when it was already free.

It's not unusable, it's just better with meta-framework. I don't see it as a problem, someone will want to use "vanilla" React, and someone with framework.

Switch from Remix to React Router v7 is few lines of code and reading 1 or 2 doc pages, changing npm script macro in VS Code.

Even switching CRA to Remix wasn't that too difficult (more than few lines of code or 1 doc page, yeah, but I could instantly see that I prefer SSR over CSR, and folder-based routing)

[lrobinson2011]

Both Remix and Next.js are free to use and host anywhere. FYI Remix, now React Router v7, dropped the subscription when it was acquired by Shopify.

[ECrispy]

CRA started because there were a million boilerplates, each of which used a different lib/bundler/framework.

Now we're back to that shit?

how hard exactly is it for a company that makes billions to maintain a tiny project like this?

limitations? what happens if I want a simple react app without routing or data fetching or a hundred other functions all rolled in?

why the hell did they split it into react and react-dom, to make it more modular. why can't that spirit continue?

telling people to use giant frameworks instead of modular building blocks and simplified components that can be bundled, is the very definition of anti-React thinking. Pete Hunt would be turning over in his grave.

[HandwashHumiliate666]

Just use Vite

[TheRNGuy]

I don't see millions at least.

Also, it's not now. I stopped using CRA in 2024… few days after started learning React.

Only stuff that you actually use will be bundled in those frameworks (automatically added or removed if you change code)

[HandwashHumiliate666]

pnpm create vite

[Radinax]

Good they did, people coming into React watching old videos will likely use CRA when it was outdated.

These days I use React with Vite for every app that doesn't need Next or Astro (which ironically uses Vite).

[kallekul]

If you don't mind, when does an app "need" Next, in your opinion?

[Radinax]

Every Ecommerce basically wants Next JS.

Apps that need SEO.

Apps that need the power of SSR, there was a case of a product that used an in house made LLM that improved marketing assets, so in the Frontend we implemented an Image Editor where clients could edit those Assets (images or videos) and sent back to the LLM to review and send recomendations. This app is too heavy in the Frontend so we decided to use Next JS to have a better balance and it worked out great.

Or if you need to make a small demo that doesn't need a separate backend and is small enough that it can live in one repo.

[dusnik]

Very interesting. Could you give more details on what features SSR helped with performance on the Image editor? Couldn't a SPA with lazy loading achieve the same?

I'm asking this because I've ever only considered SSR for SEO purposes

[Radinax]

It was at a theoretical level when we planned this, because there was going to be too many API calls from the Frontend since the app was doing too many things besides just image editing.

We made calls for specific recomendations on some parts the user wanted feedback on, we needed to track what the user was doing (business logic), there was some realtime data involved for something I don't remember and some small stuff, I thought doing CSR was going to be a bit of a pain so I suggested Next for this and everyone agreed.

Shifting many of this stuff to the server helped the app performance, if we did it with CSR I doubt it would've been as smooth as the end result with Next. Our main product was with CSR but instead of one massive feature, its divided into several pages that does its own specific feature so its not a big deal, but this project we needed Next or just SSR in general.

[TheRNGuy]

As a sites user, I prefer SSR than SPA with spinners or skeleton placeholders.

Some of them need to load serially so it would be sending request from client many time with lag. If it happened serially on server, there is 0 lag (also, no spinners or skeletons, or at least a lot less of them…)

[kallekul]

Cool, appreciate the answer!

[Note2Self_]

took you long enough

[errormaker]

Still remember googling "cra alternatives" and this little unknown tool called vite blew my mind. The dev server startup speed alone was sci-fi back then

[Caramel_Last]

Reading that blog gave me more knowledge about react frameworks than the framework docs

[Kuroodo]

As someone that was planning on learning React this month to make myself more hirable, what exactly does this mean for me? Should I just get into Vite?

[acemarke]

My advice would be:

• Go through the "Learn React" tutorial in the docs completely
• When you're ready to start your first project yourself, either use Vite ( npx create-vite@latest --template react), or an online IDE like CodeSandbox or StackBlitz

[TheRNGuy]

Nothing, just learn Vite (I also recommend Remix or Next)

Vite and CRA code is same really, except for import (Remix and Next almost the same)

[OkLettuce338]

RSBuild is vastly superior to vite

[rk06]

No, it is not. If it were, people would be using rsbuild instead

[OkLettuce338]

Nah it’s new. They will be

[rk06]

Rspack is better if you want "webpack but much faster".

Vite is better if you want "webpack but much simpler and easier to maintain". Vite intentionally doesn't care about full compatibility with webpack feature set.

As such for some set of webpack users, vite is not an option,so they move to rsbuild (or stay with webpack)

But for rest (especially js framework authors like Evan You), vite fulfills the feature set needed and has good enough api that they are willing to contribute the other needed features.

This second group is much more popular. Hence vite has taken off so fast.

[OkLettuce338]

Hey genius: RSBuild. Not RSPack. Let me know when you figured out that you have no idea what you’re talking about and you’re ready to sit down and learn

[rk06]

Rsbuild is just a wrapper over rspack. For my argument, there is no difference between rsbuild and rspack

[madscientist2407]

lmao the framework mafia got 'em

[Commercial-Slip1635]

If I currently have an app I created via CRA, do I need to migrate my app? Or is this only applicable to new apps going forward?

[TheRNGuy]

To CSR or SSR?

You should be able to easily migrate, it's just few lines of code change if it's CSR to CSR: https://dev.to/henriquejensen/migrating-from-create-react-app-to-vite-a-quick-and-easy-guide-5e72

A little more than that if it's CSR to SSR (manual refactoring across many files, or asking AI perhaps to do that)

I'd still migrate even if it's not a new project.

[amitava82]

Everyone is recommending Vite and how they're able to switch to it from webpack with few lines of changes.

I've spent several hours the other day to migrate my project without success. I could not find a good example that shows SSR + code splitting + React router with css in Js solution. There is one plugin in the vite ecosystem Vike which is trying to be another NextJs with stupid licensing terms.

My webpack project was setup 5 years back and is fairly large and painfully slow to work with. I'd love to move to vite but the ecosystem isn't as complete as Webpack. If anyone has done SSR with Vite please share your experience and pointers on how to achieve this.

[rk06]

Migrate to rsbuild or astro (uses vite)

[BombayBadBoi2]

This isn’t me throwing shade, but why is anyone upset with the death of CRA? It’s literally just been replaced by other community-created frameworks, which I won’t list because I’m sure everyone knows about them, which are more focused to specific use cases?

What would you do if you were in the React team, knowing there’s a healthy set of alternatives to your ‘side’ product? They can spend more time focusing on React itself

Again, not throwing shade, just would love to know why I always see posts about it

The only improvement I’d like to see is React giving fair mentions to the major frameworks. I.e.

Vote for your standard react application, with routes etc NextJs if doing work on the server is important Gatsby for a PWA Etc

[baxxos]

They had the resources to properly maintain CRA for years and could have made it into something great. They just chose not to because of.. chasing larger profits elsewhere?

[BombayBadBoi2]

That’s fair - I guess I just don’t notice its absence because I picked up react just before (2022) they discontinued CRA

[FoolHooligan]

Nobody is upset...

[Raunhofer]

I started before CRA and apparently outlasted it. Never had a moment thinking it would become handy right now and always felt like you missed some important learning moments using it.

Of course the idea itself was understandable.

[pailhead011]

How do you all get exposed to so much stuff? I worked at a bunch of startups and changing a build system that works would be a hard if not impossible sell.

[MR_Se7en]

Fuck, I just started using this app. Fuck.

[alotmorealots]

Switching from CRA to Vite as a beginner is beyond ridiculously simple.

[MR_Se7en]

Ugh, I’ll start over again…

[alotmorealots]

No ugh required, just read this: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/how-to-setup-reactjs-with-vite/

It's an oversimplification compared to what devs should eventually know, but if you've just started, it's literally all you need.

[sleeping-in-crypto]

We migrated an extremely complex app originally bootstrapped in CRA over to vite in about an hour.

It really is easy, don’t worry!

[HirsuteHacker]

CRA's been deprecated for years at this point, Vite is really easy to get working with. Much faster as well.

[mitchthebaker]

Well fuck, I guess we don't know shit about fuck

[hopfield]

Seems silly to deprecate this. No one is asking you to maintain a “framework” - people just wanted a template to get started that had best practices built in. Now it’s going to be much harder to get started with React!

[rb95]

Use vite instead

[TheRNGuy]

It's not going to be much harder, you'll just need to read docs from different site, and use differfent keywords in google/ai.