What exactly is changing in the latest version?

It has been two and a half years since React v16 was first released. The dev team promises that update v17 is incredibly important for the future of React but claims that no new features are being added. So what exactly does that mean? And how can React claim to be releasing a major new version without adding new features?

Gradual React updates

Past React updates have always caused deprecations of older versions. This could make it incredibly difficult for teams to upgrade their React versions, especially when working with large or neglected codebases. So, the React team has decided that v17 will lay the groundwork for a new method of adopting updates. When React v18 is released, developers will be able to choose to only upgrade parts of their app and keep other parts running on v17. React advises against this if you’re application is actively maintained or in large-scale production, but it can help teams who don’t actively maintain their application or who don’t need to migrate certain components to the newer version. In the future, new React versions won’t leave these apps behind or demand massive migrations.

To enable this ability, the React team has spent some time reworking the event system. These updates are what caused React v17 to be a major release since it could potentially break many applications.

#javascript #react #developer