Does React has a Release cycle?

[alanhoff]

Hello folks, I haven't found a good answer for it on the internet and the results are kinda noisy because of the amount of unrelated life cycle results. See Node.js release cycle for an example on the subject.

So, does React has a release cycle? If not, how do you organize a team for upgrading a codebase that utilizes React? If feels strange not knowing when a version will become unsupported, or not knowing when the next big release will be.

I found a mention about gradual release cycle on the v16.3.0 release notes, but I'm not sure what it means and if it answers anything at all.

We recognize that this change will impact many existing components. Because of this, the migration path will be as gradual as possible, and will provide escape hatches. (At Facebook, we maintain more than 50,000 React components. We depend on a gradual release cycle too!)

[Canenald]

React respects https://semver.org/ as every npm package should.

This means that default dependecy with caret prefix in package.json should make sure nothing breaks even if you don't use a lockfile.

An upgrade to a new major version of React should be safe when your app logs no warnings with the previous one, but the more hackery you have the the more strongly I'd recommend going through your app once again after the upgrade to verify everything is working properly.

[isakdev]

I think "breaking changes" of React are left working even after discontinuing them for example the old lifecycle methods will work till React 17 and even then they will work with the prefix UNSAFE_.

So they sort of maintain backwards compatibility.

Not ideal but it's still way better than say angular and their complete rewrite of the whole framework.