Facebook has touted its own tooling for React for some time, but most developers know that getting set up requires learning quite a fool tools to set up a project. Its new project, however, the aptly-named ‘Create React App’ should make this simpler.
The project, born out of a hackathon, bundles tools and makes it easier for developers to get started developing and deploying JavaScript projects for the platform. In fact, the bundle pairs everything down to a single command-line tool.
“We knew that such projects traditionally haven’t been very successful in the React ecosystem,” Facebook’s Dan Abramov writes in today’s announcement. “Christopher Chedeau told TechCrunch. ‘React CLI’ projects have started and failed at Facebook. The community tools with similar goals also exist, but so far they have not yet gained enough traction.”
With Create React App, developers no longer have to worry about configuration files and their environment automatically comes with a single tool — a single dependency — that uses many of the existing tools in the JavaScript and React ecosystem. The team also stresses that this won’t lock you in, a problem typical to these types of services.
“‘Ejecting’ lets you leave the comfort of Create React App setup at any time,” Abramov writes. “You run a single command, and all the build dependencies, configs, and scripts are moved right into your project. At this point you can customize everything you want, but effectively you are forking our configuration and going your own way.”
The tool is great for new and intermediate developers, but it’s not something that experienced developers will want to dismiss out of hand, either. With the ease of set-up and the speed at which you can deploy new projects, it’s definitely worth checking out for even the most experienced developers.
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