Deprecate Create React App officially by changing the README, and adding a message on init

[orta]

It's probably time to make this project document its status as being deprecated and not recommended for production usage.

To change it:

• I opted to add a header to the README saying its over and you should go look at https://react.dev/learn/start-a-new-react-project

• I left a note saying that if you are following, it is maybe worth carrying on. While I hear react 19 doesn't work with CRA, I wouldn't be surprised that a good chunk of tutorials would still work. Open to being a bit more hard-lined there but there was a lot of great resources for learning react in that era and it seems like a waste to be making people stop early?

• I added a message inside the CLI, it shows once and says "don't use this, use the stuff in https://react.dev/learn/start-a-new-react-project"

[orta]

The deprecation message itself is 👍🏻 but the fail on CI is a react 19 issue

Perhaps it could be locked to 18?

Installing template dependencies using npm...
npm ERR! code ERESOLVE
npm ERR! ERESOLVE unable to resolve dependency tree
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! While resolving: [email protected]
npm ERR! Found: [email protected]
npm ERR! node_modules/react
npm ERR!   react@"^19.0.0" from the root project
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Could not resolve dependency:
npm ERR! peer react@"^18.0.0" from @testing-library/[email protected]
npm ERR! node_modules/@testing-library/react
npm ERR!   @testing-library/react@"^13.0.0" from the root project
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Fix the upstream dependency conflict, or retry
npm ERR! this command with --force, or --legacy-peer-deps
npm ERR! to accept an incorrect (and potentially broken) dependency resolution.
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! See /home/runner/.npm/eresolve-report.txt for a full report.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /home/runner/.npm/_logs/2025-01-24T11_48_43_485Z-debug-0.log
`npm install --no-audit --save @testing-library/jest-dom@^5.14.1 @testing-library/react@^13.0.0 @testing-library/user-event@^13.2.1 web-vitals@^2.1.0` failed

Merging this PR could come with #13725 and it should get green and give CRA a bit of a longer run

[markerikson]

Yeah, the overall problem is that the CLI has always installed react@latest, but the current templates include a React Testing Library version that wants react@18 as a peer dep. Now that React 19 is latest, NPM has its usual hardline "peer dep mismatches are full breaking errors" behavior, so we end up with an error every time you try to create a project with one of the standard templates.

[rickhanlonii]

thanks!

[jt3k]

God, I've been waiting for this moment for so long. this should have been done 10 years ago, because cra is not suitable for production, it is only useful for learning React and if you want to try React when you need to save time to the detriment of the technology stack inside. I've been waiting for this for so long because over the years I've found cra inside large and small projects in the places where I worked, and I've always deprecated and rewrote them on a webpack, parcel, or vite.

[bmuenzenmeyer]

I hope this doesn't alarm anyone paying attention. Overall, it's good for clarity to the community at large. There's been plenty, plenty of hints to this over the years. I often cite this one, from 2021.

but overall, starting with 2.0, it's mostly in maintenance mode and does not strive to be the best tool for production React apps. It is a tool to get started and get something running fast. Perhaps, it's not even best at that anymore.