React Native New Architecture Rollout Update
Article Summary
React Native's biggest architectural shift in years is here. The team just dropped their roadmap for migrating the entire ecosystem to the New Architecture (Fabric + TurboModules).
The React Native core team announced their 2022 rollout plan for the New Architecture, marking it as 'the year of the New Architecture in open source.' They've launched multiple initiatives to support developers and library maintainers through this major migration, including a working group, migration guides, and an opt-in switch in React Native 0.68.0.
Key Takeaways
- React Native 0.68.0 includes one-line opt-in switch for New Architecture testing
- New working group launched on GitHub for coordinating ecosystem-wide migration
- Hermes becomes default JS engine, bundled with React Native for compatibility
- Migration guide published with step-by-step instructions for custom components
- Community testers helped fix critical bugs before 0.68 release
React Native is executing a coordinated, community-driven migration to its New Architecture with tooling, documentation, and support structures now in place for developers and library maintainers.
About This Article
Library developers had to go through a tedious migration process to support both old and New Architecture at the same time. This became a blocker for community adoption of Fabric and TurboModules.
React Native created a dedicated GitHub discussion category for library status updates. They also built a community feedback mechanism where users could request library migrations. This helped the team identify and prioritize blockers.
Software Mansion's react-native-screens was an early success. They published a migration guide that showed dual-architecture support was feasible. Other maintainers saw this and decided to follow the same path.