React v17.0 Release Candidate: No New Features

Today, we are publishing the first Release Candidate for React 17. It has been two and a half years since , which is a long time even by our standards! In this blog post, we will describe the role of this major release, what changes you can expect in it, and how you can try this release.

No New Features

The React 17 release is unusual because it doesn’t add any new developer-facing features. Instead, this release is primarily focused on making it easier to upgrade React itself.

We’re actively working on the new React features, but they’re not a part of this release. The React 17 release is a key part of our strategy to roll them out without leaving anyone behind.

In particular, React 17 is a “stepping stone” release that makes it safer to embed a tree managed by one version of React inside a tree managed by a different version of React.

Gradual Upgrades

For the past seven years, React upgrades have been “all-or-nothing”. Either you stay on an old version, or you upgrade your whole app to a new version. There was no in-between.

This has worked out so far, but we are running into the limits of the “all-or-nothing” upgrade strategy. Some API changes, for example, deprecating the , are impossible to do in an automated way. Even though most apps written today don’t ever use them, we still support them in React. We have to choose between supporting them in React indefinitely or leaving some apps behind on an old version of React. Both of these options aren’t great.

So we wanted to provide another option.