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>At times they're passion projects that still need to gain traction that entreats the company to something worthwhile to the company That's not the case with R
by danabramov 8y ago
>At times they're passion projects that still need to gain traction that entreats the company to something worthwhile to the company
That's not the case with React Native though.
The problem is that the surface area is vast, and the popularity is booming through the roof. If RN team looked at every issue, the (very active) development would stall completely. On the "web" React repo we can afford to do this because our surface area is much smaller, but on RN it's not practical.
So instead, the RN team tends to focus on the issues that are reported most often by the FB product teams. While this is not a great outside communication strategy, it ends up highlighting most pain points shared by folks outside the company too. Note this includes vast architectural improvements as highlighted in the post--something that goes way beyond a traditional GitHub issue report.
While admittedly this approach puts FB's needs first, it also serves as an important way to keep the team focused. It is very hard to deal with dozen new issues every day and still move the project forward so they chose this path.
I want to highlight that RN has maintainers outside of FB who help with different parts of the codebase (because again, the surface area is vast), sometimes with more expertise in those areas than people at FB. So the project isn't dependent on FB maintainers looking at issues alone. Folks outside can, and do help.
This doesn't mean issues don't end up being addressed in the end. But GH issue communication model just doesn't scale well for RN.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoAll good points, thanks. I guess I was remarking on other experiences more to do with other FB Open Source projects versus giants like RN. edit: Just realized which Dan you are. Thanks for the insights. Your team does good work.
- olfactory 8y agoI think you should just hire a few smart people who can be dedicated to supporting these issues which are high priority outside Facebook. These issues are extremely costly to teams using React and they absolutely need much faster resolution.
- tmaier 8y agoThis could even be a business model. Pay $$$ or €€€ to get enterprise support, promissing to fix your issue with a Pull Request in the mainstream repository
- vosper 8y agoWhy should Facebook pay for that? If there are issues that are extremely costly to a bunch of outside teams maybe they should be the ones hiring people to fix their problems.
- antris 8y agoBetter developer relations.
- pygy_ 8y agoIt looks like Microsoft is pursuing React Native as an alternative to Google's Flutter. It may be strategic for them to take that role and hire folks to work on React Native, either a MS fork, or as part of a conjoined effort with Facebook.
- danabramov 8y agoThat's exactly what ends up happening: companies that invest heavily in RN also contribute back (and even help us managing issues and releases).
- olfactory 8y agoFWIW I think you guys should put out a major call for help to other companies and add more non-FB people to the core committers. React Native is fantastic, but the ecosystem is thrashed around horribly by these kinds of bugs and the non response from Facebook for things that impact most of the non-Facebook open source ecosystem around React Native.
- nol13 8y agoBeen actively wondering if there would be enough interest/momentum for a community LTS fork. Love RN, and the daunting vastness of the surface area not lost on me, but would be totally ok with me if development stalled for 6 months of purely bug-fix releases. Maybe I'd sound differently if I cared about integration with native apps.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- valuearb 8y agoCan't understand how any internal team at Facebook tolerates the sloppy coding practices of the RN team. Is everything just technical debt to be ignored and left behind so the team can work on the latest shiniest feature?
- s73v3r_ 8y agoFrom descriptions, that's the way all teams at Facebook work.