Switch to React

[martinheidegger]

The title says it all but let me explain the issue: I have tried to help with the update from mircocomponent to nanocomponent and also tried to improve the existing test situation. And while choo is certainly not a bad framework, I have to say that it made getting into dat-desktop harder. Most of the issues that I have found stem from unclear state management and render triggers (example: the whole list of items gets re-rendered when only the network state changed).

With choo I have yet to find a good way on how to do good propagation of updates in child components in order for parent components to trigger an update (example: if the hex-icon changes state that the whole row needs to be redrawn). The implementation in the nanocomponent feels hacky at best, both in the child and in the parent.

It is possible to work around such issues but seeing as the time working on dat is limited to me I would rather like to focus on improving the desktop than on trying to fix older issues. I have no-one in my local community that I can ask about choo but several people engaged into React development and this is probably true for a lot of other possible contributors. Thus I would like to ask if its okay to send a PR that switches from choo to react.

I am not sure this is needed but here is a short summary of reasons I feel would make it worth to switch:

• Choo doesn't support composite elements, and that makes tracking of changes in subcomponents difficult. (see mentioned above)
• React is more stable (through the sheer amount of users) and comes with UI debug tools.
• The choo eventbus system is nice for business logic but problematic when used in wizards like the tutorial. (see https://github.com/dotloom/dat-desktop/commit/81769f0129e22e6f4a222807b4281b9eae3ee054#diff-44c825eae9fb38934a22b1f6a61b8b95)

[okdistribute]

Sounds good to me!

[yoshuawuyts]

👍 sure

[juliangruber]

It has started :) #458

[juliangruber]

I've created a GitHub project to track progress: https://github.com/datproject/dat-desktop/projects/1

[e-e-e]

This is excellent news. I have plenty of experience with react, so this change will make it much more easier for me to contribute. I am glad that facebook removed the patent from React.

[simonv3]

From that project it looks like this is pretty close to done, is that right? It's just a matter of getting all the tests to pass?

[martinheidegger]

@simonv3 - There are some issues with adding dats, some build settings are not yet added again. But other than that it should be mostly finished.

[simonv3]

@martinheidegger if those are documented I can try taking a crack at some of those things?

[okdistribute]

This is done!