I have an application which runs on react-native 0.49.3 I want to upgrade to the latest version which is v0.57.4.
Should I incrementally update it? For example 0.49 -> 0.50 -> 0.51 etc Or I can just update it to to the latest version?
Do you suggest using react-native-git-upgrade or rn-diff?
My advice is to upgrade to the latest version. There will be enough dependency issues anyway so you're best dealing with them only once.
From the React Native upgrade page (https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/upgrading)
you can run:
npm install -g react-native-git-upgrade
react-native-git-upgrade
UPDATE: I've never had a problem before with upgrades, but was recently on a project where we upgraded from an old copy of React Native 0.44.3 to a newer version (first to 0.57.8, then to 0.55.4, then to 0.58.3 while struggling with stability) and discovered that it's not always as easy as running those commands. Be warned that this could be a long, tedious process, especially if you have not upgraded regularly and have a long gap between upgrades. In this case, it was 18 months.
First, there have been changes to the upgrade process itself (react-native upgrade, to now react-native-git-upgrade) itself. So, if you're using a version that's a year old or more there could be some manual discrepancies that you'll have to go through. Some are spelled out after running the react-native-git-upgrade command, and some are not. I was amazed at the number of people on Stack Overflow going through the same undocumented circular issues of a seemingly innocent upgrade. I was not expecting that. I'd be OK with Facebook not adding any features for 6 months and simplifying the upgrade process before moving on.
Second, make sure your version of React Native uses the right dependencies. Later versions of the upgrade tool (react-native-git-upgrade) try to account for this, but double check at https://github.com/react-native-community/react-native-releases/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md to see if the version of RN that you're upgrading to requires a specific dependency. Some do while others do not.
Next, library hades is real, depending on how big your project is. In our case, several modules in use in our 0.44.3 version have now been deprecated or no longer maintained or even work differently with the later versions of RN. I didn't consider this enough when starting this process. This caused several instances of code rewrite just to upgrade!! Yikes!
Also, just as some versions of React Native require specific versions of dependencies, other modules require specific versions of some dependencies. Worse, sometimes these are incompatible and conflicting versions, of various libraries. Save some time and write a user story or two to account for this. Go through every module you're using and see if there are any compatibility statements on their GitHub page. Some Readme files will tell you to use certain versions of their module with certain versions of React Native. Others won't and you may find out later there are requirements. But even going through this process and anticipating issues, you'll thank yourself later.
Once you're up to date and stable, consider upgrading regularly to minimize the upgrade nightmare that I just went through.
Just change the path to the project for which you want to upgrade the react native version and then run this command:
react-native upgrade
and after running this command you will see some questions. Type n to discard the change to that file or type y if you want to modify that file. It will automatically install the latest version of react-native for your project. More info at: https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/upgrading
OR
You can upgrade react native version by this simple step:
1- Just go to package.json file of your project
2- After that, look for these lines
"dependencies": {
"react-native": "0.57.8",
}
3- Change the react-native version to any version that you want to upgrade to in "dependencies".
4- After this run npm install and react native version will be upgraded for your project.
You will need @react-native-community/cli to upgrade to the latest version of react-native, sadly not mentioned anywhere.
npm install -g @react-native-community/cli
Install react-native-git-upgrade
npm install -g react-native-git-upgrade
Now go to your project.
cd your-react-native-project
Now you can run the upgrade command.
react-native upgrade
I recommend visiting this page: https://github.com/react-native-community/rn-diff-purge
because you can see the list of exactly what changes in each version. I find it's simpler to manually change config settings after starting from your version that is proven to work properly via react-native run-android and react-native run-ios.
It sounds like a horrible task, but it's not very difficult for your fingers or brain to remove red lines and add green lines--at least compared to alternatives such as Googling to sort out horrific error messages in the Android/iOS build systems.
I also believe that it's a good idea to manually change config settings for example going from 0.44 to 0.59 because you get more of an opportunity to see exactly what is changing in each version. You'll see the changes are reasonable and generally have bearing on fostering future automation and increasing the build systems' robustness and aversion to breakage.
Additionally, changes were implemented in RN 0.59 that makes react-native upgrade better, and in addition to my additional statement, the whole 0.59 release is pretty massive and important for future: http://facebook.github.io/react-native/blog/#upgrading-to-059
I'm not even going to talk about react-native upgrade or react-native-git-upgrade because I find those to be generally a source of nightmares especially if you get into react-native unlink and react-native link.
You can update to the latest version directly, I'd recommend to do it with react-native-git-upgrade, but do be careful to read the update release notes on the versions up to yours, they have some notes about things you should do manually that the upgrade will not. You can find the notes here: https://github.com/facebook/react-native/releases
The notes are usually on top in the changelogs, I know the latest releases had some of those and gave me some work to update from 0.54 recently so be aware.
I would recommend using this tool (upgrade helper) which allows you to compare your current react native version and latest react native version.
Also, It's good to upgrade react-native frequently to stay up to date with the latest version and make the upgrade process easy.
https://react-native-community.github.io/upgrade-helper/
react-native upgrade
npm i react-native@{{VERSION}}
npm i react@{{VERSION}}
https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/upgrading
https://react-native-community.github.io/upgrade-helper/?from=0.59.9&to=0.61.0
