Metro Package Exports and Symlinks in React Native 0.72

React Native 0.72 just dropped with the two most requested Metro features that developers have been waiting years for. Monorepo teams and pnpm users, this one's for you.

The React Native team released version 0.72, prioritizing features directly from their 2022 community survey feedback. This release focuses heavily on Metro bundler improvements and developer experience enhancements that address long-standing pain points in the ecosystem.

Key Takeaways

• Beta symlink support enables transparent monorepo setups and pnpm without workarounds
• Package Exports support aligns React Native with modern npm ecosystem standards
• Hermes compilation improved 97% for large object literals in reported cases
• Invalid style properties now fail silently instead of throwing disruptive redboxes
• Three deprecated iOS components removed: Slider, DatePickerIOS, and ProgressViewIOS

The new metro.config.js format becomes required in 0.73, and there's a specific reason the team is moving New Architecture updates to a separate channel.