Today is a big day for the ReasonML community as we are releasing the fruits of
+a long effort started about 4 months ago.
As more and more people were starting to use ReasonML on production apps using
+React Native, we wanted to make the ReScript / BuckleScript bindings for React Native,
+known has bs-react-native, more accessible. This would have involved several
+breaking changes in order to simplify some APIs that have been designed with a
+high level of security in mind, but at some costs. The cost of being harder to
+start with (for newcomers to ReasonML) as well as the cost in terms of code size
+and performance.
While some of us were thinking about some simplifications, some others, involved
+in Reason React incoming changes, directly started a new approach for this
+bindings, following
+the zero-cost approach offered by reason-react 0.7.0.
CCA started this effort on what is now know as the new
+reason-react-native bindings, that eliminates a huge part of the additional
+JavaScript code produced by the bindings.
Zero-cost
By zero-cost, we means zero additional cost. The JavaScript code ReScript / BuckleScript
+produces using this bindings will most of the time directly hit React Native
+JavaScript code without creating an unnecessary abstraction above it 🙌.
Here are some random examples:
Some modules are even empty or with some minor require() that can be
+themselves almost empty and easily removed by some JavaScript bundlers.
How cool is that?
But why reason-react-native ?
bs-react-native already had multiple breaking changes in the past and we
+didn't really want to offer a poor experience by creating a new release with
+tons of changes that won't be easy to codemod (or would require much more work
+from us).
On top of that, reason-react latest release already added an important
+breaking change with
+JSX 3.
That's why we had this idea about offering an easy and smooth transition by
+offering 2 packages to say goodbye to bs-react-native without pain.
bs-react-native-jsx3-compat (0.11.1)reason-react-native
+(0.60.0)
Wait, what is bs-react-native-jsx3-compat ?
bs-react-native is using JSX 2 so in order to use it with JSX 3 we would have
+to create an additional layer on top of the current bindings to offer both JSX 2
+and 3 bindings. And since we wanted to do away with some current APIs of
+bs-react-native we started to think about a new approach.
We knew that we wanted to:
- offer to
bs-react-native users a migration plan, so they can start very
+easily to use JSX 3 and new reason-react (so they can use hooks), - offer new
reason-react-native bindings, more accessible and with a zero cost
+approach. - offer a smooth transition between these two packages so people can slowly
+upgrade their codebase without having to make an insane PR that switches from
+one to the other.
We don't want your co-workers to hate you with a PR that comes directly from
+hell 😅.
That's where we thought about offering bs-react-native-jsx3-compat. It's a
+package that has the same APIs bs-react-native has but that uses
+reason-react-native under the hood.
This means you will have to make a migration from JSX 2 to 3. That's the
+only thing you will have to do, then with a single change from bs-react-native
+with bs-react-native-jsx3-compat in your bs-dependencies you will be ready
+to use hooks and directly benefit of (almost) zero-cost bindings!
And since we care about you and don't want you to upgrade from JSX 2 to 3 by
+hand, we got you covered with a script made with love to help you with that.
You will find all the required instructions to migrate from bs-react-native to bs-react-native-jsx3-compat in our documentation.
tl;dr
Thanks
This required effort has been keeping us busy for weeks and wouldn't have been
+possible without the following people:
- CCA team and especially @cknitt for leading us to
+the right direction for the new zero-cost bindings and all the contributions
+that come with this move
- @sgny for all his contributions to the new bindings
- @MoOx for leading the effort, the compat layer and
+the new website you are seeing here
- @bloodyowl for his magical
+reason-react-compat layer
+and
+the alternate JSX 3 upgrade path
+that goes with it
- all the people that helped us on Discord and GitHub in various code reviews
+and improvements like the react native template (thanks
+@dawee)
What's next?
Now that reason-react-native is ready to be used and that our migration plan
+is usable, we will probably be focused on documentation as lots of APIs and
+Components need to be documented. We really want to offer the best developer
+experience possible and that's definitely part of it.
👉Now it's time for you to check our
+Getting Started with Reason React Native documentation