Discussion: Upgrade process is a pain

I’m trying to upgrade from RN 0.57.8 to 0.59.0.

Unfortunately I’m trapped in a double bind because:

react-native-git-upgrade 0.59.0 fails with the following error:

git-upgrade ERR! An error occurred during upgrade: 
git-upgrade ERR! Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, stat './node_modules/react-native/local-cli/generator/copyProjectTemplateAndReplace.js'

I’ve found this issue, where it is suggested to use the new upgrade command of the CLI. But, the version I’m running tells me to use react-native-git-upgrade instead 8()

You should consider using the new upgrade tool based on Git. It makes upgrades easier by resolving most conflicts automatically.
To use it:
- Go back to the old version of React Native
- Run "npm install -g react-native-git-upgrade"
- Run "react-native-git-upgrade"
See https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/upgrading.html

What should I do to upgrade to 0.59.0

[jeffreyffs]

https://github.com/react-native-community/react-native-releases/issues/100#issuecomment-472111011

Bump react-native to 0.59 in your package.json, run npm/yarn install, then run react-native upgrade --legacy

Alternatively: You can follow the recommendations here for getting to 0.59

[amitassaraf]

@hramos For me it was not clear what I was supposed to do. I understood I need to apply changes manually and that is about it.

The following are the steps I took and I think they should be added / explained better in the blog post.

1. In rn-diff-purge’s version table find your current React Native version.
2. Click the Compare column link and apply all changes that were made there manually on your project.
3. Repeat step 2 all the way up the table up to React Native version 0.59.0
4. Run yarn / npm install, this will officially put your project on RN v0.59.0 [This is the main step that is missing from the blog post imo]
5. Run react-native upgrade to upgrade your project to the latest RN version (0.59.1) using the new update command.
6. Run pod install for iOS if needed and thats it, you are now on the latest RN version.

For me the confusing parts were steps 2, 3, and 4. All that was written in the blog post was “Apply the changes manually”.