How to handle different CLI versions

[emin93]

Introduction

The new RN CLI will have an updated template feature which is incompatible with the current one. As the current CLI won't go anywhere soon, we have to support both versions for a while.

I created a new branch (cli-v2) with the changes for the new CLI.

Question

How should we handle the support for both versions?

Proposals

• Maintain two separate branches (e.g. master and master-cli-v2) and release the CLI v2 compatible template with the next tag.
• Integrate a detection in the post install script and handle the differences there. This would allow us to have only one branch but it will make things a bit messy.

[thymikee]

Both templates can live next to each other and published together:

root/
  ...old-template-files
  template.config.js
  template/

I don't think extra branching is necessary.

You'll need, however, to release a major version with every RN upgrade, because in new init the template is responsible for everything inside (ios/ and android/ will be included and they change with every RN major bump) – the project will be copied mostly "as is" (with small templateName replacements).

[emin93]

While I agree that we can solve it by having everything in the same branch, I have some "concerns" / "things we should keep in mind" with it:

• The v1 template files would live in the root folder, while v2 is in the template subfolder. After setup with the v1 CLI, we'd need to remove the v2 files in the post install script as they will get copied over as well. We could solve this also by not bundling the v2 files when npm publishing the v1 template. But that won't work when developing the template locally.
• The post install script for v1 runs as an npm post install script, therefore it would also be executed in v2. This means we'd have to detect which CLI version is in use and do the according post install work.

(v1 and v2 relate to the CLI versions and not the template)

Let me know if I misunderstood something.

[thymikee]

In v2 you can use postInitScript in template.config.js

[emin93]

Yes, but in v1 we use npm postinstall which will also execute in v2, correct?

[thymikee]

Ah yea, that's true

[emin93]

As the shorthand syntax will be removed in the upcoming CLI version (react-native-community/cli#483 (comment)), I'd vote for releasing a new package under a new shorter name for the new CLI.

The template works completely different and is independent from the one for the old CLI, so this would make even more sense. So there is no need for using @next tag anymore.

/edit
For now it is solved by using the @next tag for the new CLI. If someone feels like picking up the topic, feel free 😃!

[radko93]

@emin93 we should publish a new package so the default version is for new CLI

[emin93]

@radko93 Yes, let's do that 👍

[emin93]

As soon as this PR (#60) gets merged, we can close this issue.