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Comment by ht85 | Hacker News Reader

Props to the people who have been managing the project. I have done a lot of React in the last 6 years and have never been frustrated with their decisions, which is very rare.

I think beyond the technical aspects, the way React evolved over time was really on point. The roadmap has always been very well designed and the literature around new features and deprecated ones top notch.

The way React is used has changed completely, but at no point did I feel upgrading was too costly and ended up stuck with an old version.

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Is “props” a pun? If it is...I appreciate it * snap

Nah, I just wanted to state my appreciation.

Good to know; my uncertainty was mounting

Did it mount ?

We now only useEffect for this kind of events.

This comment rendered me speechless.

If you use hooks it's less verbose, you can just return speechless.

> I have done a lot of React in the last 6 years and have never been frustrated with their decisions, which is very rare.
Same, but this is also why I feel burnt by create-react-app. There's so many important features the team has simply decided it won't support. One of the biggest issues with the React ecosystem is that there's nothing in between training wheels (CRA) and a motorcycle (rolling your own config). Maybe there's an opportunity for a new project there.

I totally agree. If you need access to one config variable CRA doesn't support out of the box, your only option is to eject. I really wish there were the option of just providing an "overlay" file that only had your changes from the CRA defaults, rather than being forced to eject the whole config.

There are multiple existing third-party tools in the ecosystem that let you do exactly that:
- https://github.com/gsoft-inc/craco
- https://github.com/harrysolovay/rescripts
- https://github.com/timarney/react-app-rewired
- https://github.com/arackaf/customize-cra
No, they're not "officially" supported, and you basically void the warranty by poking the configs manually, but the tools do what you want them to do.

But I think that is the problem. Since there are many ways to do it, you will have to evaluate each one and hope the one you pick gets upstream updates.

I'd go with `craco`, personally.

Thank you, this list is much appreciated.

I can only second what ht85 said in a sibling comment.
I have the same complaint, but this is definitely possible using e.g. react-app-rewired.
Adding custom webpack loader rules is as simple as replacing the calls to react-scripts with calls to react-app-rewired and adding a .js file with your customizations.

I think there's a couple repos that provide exactly that - a webpackOverrides.js file or something similar.
I also think that next.js might have some of what the gp is interested in

See sibling comments for solutions to do exactly that.

"there's nothing in between training wheels (CRA) and a motorcycle"
AFAIK the "betweens" are Next.js, Blitz.js, Gatsby, Remix, Expo, etc.

I like Next.js quite a bit but I don't need SSR. To expand upon my use case a bit: I need a way to create dozens of small SPAs in an enterprise environment maintained by people who are not front-end experts. CRA fits the bill almost perfectly except it makes certain Webpack/Babel configs unavailable that make my life very difficult. The token response from the CRA team tends to be: we don't think you need this, fork or eject.
Eventually I'll end up maintaining a company fork. It's more work for me but that's life. It's really just the dogmatic attitude of the CRA team that irks me.

CRA focuses on the very basics, so it's probably not suited for your problem.
Can't you switch Next.js to SSG for all routes since v9?

CRA is exactly suited to my problem: these are simple React front-ends. I don't want any sort of server-side rendering. I don't need any of the features from Next.js. I just the ability to modify some of the basic configs that are hard-coded in CRA for unclear reasons.

When there is a clear case of use like this, the usual procedure is to create and publicize your fork.
If enough people start using it, the original maintainers will see the need it covers, and hopefully will get rid of their dogmatic attitude, seeing how real people are adopting the approach they found no value in.

Also, there may very well be forks already that are used by many people that allow to do what they want.

Not sure if I understood you correctly, but if I did then you can use react-app-rewired https://github.com/timarney/react-app-rewired

From the official docs: Alternatives to Ejecting.
https://create-react-app.dev/docs/alternatives-to-ejecting/

I've has a lot of success using react-app-rewired to do small changes to the webpack config.
You avoid ejecting and benefit from upgrades to CRA, but you can customize anything you like.
There's a `customize-cra` lib that provides useful helpers that you can use to perform the most common operations.

> to do small changes to the Webpack config
90% of the reason I eject CRA. rewired is essential.

Check out craco, for overriding specific bits of config without ejecting:
https://github.com/gsoft-inc/craco

I've been using craco. I really commend the creators but it's a project that shouldn't exist. I shouldn't have to hack the officially supported solution to do simple things like provide my SSL cert to Webpack or tweak some Babel config.

to be honest, Id say the next level abstractions(gatsby and next) fill that role. I can’t think of a SPA alternative though

I tried to start with React 5-6 years ago but got burned with WebPack complex config and scarce docs. Went back to it with Create React App 3-4 years ago and I'm in love, I don't ever want to go back to building complex apps with jQuery.

I prefer to use it as a rendering library only. That part is good. But much of the ecosystem is a mess. CRA, a fundamental piece, is a trainwreck. If you eject you can see how much focus on local simplicity has been implemented at the expense of global stability...

I feel the same way about React. Out of all of the current choices I feel like React is not only mature but very useful.
The only thing that really ever irked me is the weird LICENCE clause about patents but that was addressed.

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