Proper mechanism to downgrade react-native

Question

My situation is this :

I had a working copy of a react-native project that was working well. Had it commited to my git repository.

I decided to upgrade react-native to 0.26.3 and then 0.28 and finally ended up in a big dependency mess with collisions. So decided to go back to previous working version. Reverted the changes. Removed node_modules folder from my working directory.

But now npm install just won't work.

My working dependencies in package.json

  "dependencies": {
    "immutable": "^3.8.1",
    "key-mirror": "^1.0.1",
    "react": "^15.0.2",
    "react-native": "^0.26.0",
    "react-native-router-flux": "^3.26.1",
    "react-redux": "^4.4.5",
    "redux": "^3.5.2",
    "redux-thunk": "^2.1.0",
    "strformat": "0.0.7"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "babel-core": "^6.10.4",
    "babel-jest": "^12.1.0",
    "babel-preset-es2015": "^6.9.0",
    "babel-preset-react-native": "^1.9.0",
    "babel-register": "^6.9.0",
    "chai": "^3.5.0",
    "fetch-mock": "^4.5.4",
    "jest-cli": "^12.1.1",
    "mocha": "^2.5.3",
    "mockery": "^1.7.0",
    "nock": "^8.0.0",
    "redux-mock-store": "^1.1.1",
    "sinon": "^1.17.4",
    "sinon-chai": "^2.8.0",
    "sinon-stub-promise": "^2.0.0"
  }

Now I get

npm ERR! peerinvalid The package react@15.1.0 does not satisfy its siblings' peerDependencies requirements!
npm ERR! peerinvalid Peer react-native@0.26.3 wants react@15.0.2
npm ERR! peerinvalid Peer react-redux@4.4.5 wants react@^0.14.0 || ^15.0.0-0

This just not makes sense to me, as my react dependency is 15.0.2 and react-native 0.26.0 as you can see in package.json.

Note that this is from a previous commit that was working (the whole lot). I also did a npm ls. Weirdly wrong dependencies are shown in the tree like wrong versions of react-native, react-native-router-flux, react.

link to ls output

I did. After reverting, I had to install `npm install` after reverting from source control — Sathyakumar Seshachalam, Jun 25 '16 at 01:48

score 27 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 24 '20 at 04:59

27

For existing projects if you want to install/downgrade to lower version

npm install react-native@x.x.x  ex: npm install react-native@0.43.4

This will install the version specified.

Check the installed version with react-native --version

edited Jul 24 '20 at 04:59

liamnickell

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answered May 03 '17 at 04:51

chetan

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How to downgrade properly not just project specific but globally? Is there a way? – Sagaryal Dec 22 '17 at 04:16
This is just locally? How to do it globally? – red-devil Aug 04 '18 at 20:23
check out [Upgrading react-native](https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/upgrading) . may be helpful. – chetan Aug 08 '18 at 05:48

Saranjith · Answer 2 · 2020-03-05T05:44:52.867

11

Update 2020

Just run

npm install react-native@0.43.8

Replace 0.43.8 with version you need.

edited Mar 05 '20 at 05:44

answered Jun 12 '18 at 05:20

Saranjith

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score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 25 '16 at 07:15

Please update your react dependency in package.json to explicitly be 15.0.2, not ^15.0.2 since the latter resolves to 15.1.0 which causes this issue. It is recommended to leave it that way until you upgrade for the next time and get this error once again (to avoid react changing its version in the meantime and react-native not being ready for it).

Also, with npm3 EPEERINVALID is no longer an error, but warning.

Guy · Answer 4 · 2023-01-05T00:57:12.543

5

Downgrading React Native requires manual steps. I recommend using https://react-native-community.github.io/upgrade-helper/ and here are my steps

Set your current version as base and select the previous minor version of react-native
Revert all the changes made to files as displayed in the compare view in step 1
Delete node_modules folder, clear watchman, reset metro cache, delete pods, clear ios and android cached files. npx react-native-clean-project is super helpful.
yarn or npm install and reinstall pods for ios
Make sure all your jest tests, detox tests and manually testing both iOS and Android are working as expected.
(if needed) Repeat the steps to downgrade to another lower version

Suggestion: If you're downgrading multiple minor versions then it might be easier to downgrade one version at a time. For example, downgrading from 0.61.x to 0.58.x, would be less work to downgrade to version 0.60.x first, test and make sure everything works in iOS and Android then move on

edited Jan 05 '23 at 00:57

answered Sep 11 '18 at 19:09

Guy

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Thanks for this. Do you know if it's necessary to update project.pbxproj by hand? Or does updating all the other files cause project.pbxproj to get updated automatically? – gkeenley Apr 10 '20 at 02:38
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@gkeenley You have to update project.pbxproj by hand unfortunately – Guy Apr 10 '20 at 02:41
Ok thanks. Do you know generally what type of changes cause project.pbxproj to update automatically, and which ones don't? – gkeenley Apr 10 '20 at 03:12
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The things that I know are: using Xcode and applying their recommended updates. using react-native upgrade or any command line tools that help upgrading react-native projects. – Guy Apr 10 '20 at 15:14
Those are the ones that do update it automatically? – gkeenley Apr 10 '20 at 15:21
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As far as I know, yes. – Guy Apr 10 '20 at 20:40
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Sorry I thought I had. Done now :) – gkeenley Apr 13 '20 at 17:31

score 2 · Answer 5 · edited Jun 25 '16 at 03:31

2

Try npm prune and then npm i again.

The command npm prune will basically remove all unwanted packages, and npm i will make sure all missing packages are installed.

edited Jun 25 '16 at 03:31

joe

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answered Jun 25 '16 at 01:51

Rohit Shedage

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please let me know if this does not fix your problem – Rohit Shedage Jun 25 '16 at 01:54
Hi, No it did not solve the problem. I also did `rm -rf ~/.npm`, `npm cache clear`. Absolutely nothing helps. – Sathyakumar Seshachalam Jun 25 '16 at 02:13
can you please delete entire project from local.. pull it back and do fresh npm i.. logically does not make sense but you never know it might fix your problem – Rohit Shedage Jun 25 '16 at 02:17
Tried that as well in vain. Am not sure what else is there to do. – Sathyakumar Seshachalam Jun 25 '16 at 02:57
Try to checkout few commits prior to upgrade – Rohit Shedage Jun 25 '16 at 03:18
thats precisely what I did and didnt work.I have raised a request with npm. Hopwfull some npm expert will help me out – Sathyakumar Seshachalam Jun 25 '16 at 04:04
Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/115570/discussion-between-sathyakumar-seshachalam-and-rohit-shedage). – Sathyakumar Seshachalam Jun 25 '16 at 04:05

Wu Wei · Answer 6 · 2023-04-25T12:59:05.607

I tried to downgrade from react-native 0.71.1 to 0.70.4 with just npm i react-native@0.70.4 and fix whatever errors came up. In my case I needed this because the package react-native-vision-camera was not yet compatible with react-native 0.71.1.

But I had dozens of errors, which after a while I started to understand are due to the fact that the whole android folder that is being set up from a template when you run the npx react-native init script, has differences and must match the react-native package version. So I guess if you downgrade a minor version in this way, not just a patch, you are just very lucky if it works somehow. I would not do it.

I instead decided to freshly init react-native with the desired version:

Just git commit all your changes and push them to the remote (to be safe), mv your current project folder to a different name.
Run npx react-native init <YourProjectName> --version 0.70.6 to get the desired version, but make sure to use the same ProjectName, otherwise you might have configuration mismatches.
Integrate your own code from the old project folder (if you forget something git will tell you later), merge configuration files, etc.
add packages by running npm install <package-name> <package-2-name> <etc.) and npm install -D (for devDependencies). Don't copy the dependencies / devDependencies over from package.json, as that way you'll probably not get the right package versions that match your versions of react, react-native etc.
finally copy .git folder from your old project folder into the new one, and check the changes, to make sure you did not forget anything. And then you will actually see all the differences in the template I mentioned above. In my case more than 30 files were different between those minor versions.

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered May 03 '17 at 06:26

0

If you're using react-native you can modify your package.json file with the versions that you need and then delete all your node modules rm -rf node_modules and then reinstall npm install

answered May 03 '17 at 06:26

David Vittori

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This is not a recommended method – Saranjith Jul 24 '18 at 04:23

score 0 · Answer 8 · edited Dec 20 '19 at 11:37

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If you change the version in Package.json and reinstall npm packages it will make build errors. Please refer and downgrade/upgrade to a specific version.

edited Dec 20 '19 at 11:37

Agilanbu

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answered Dec 20 '19 at 09:43

Srinath

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there is no build errors for me after downgrading, but the app crashes when it's run, it's blocked on a black screen. – Mehdi Chibani Oct 17 '20 at 09:58

Proper mechanism to downgrade react-native

8 Answers8

Update 2020

Linked