Goodbye CRA.. Creating New Projects After React 19

Limitations of Create React App (CRA)

While following a Udemy course, I attempted to start a project using the most basic method, create-react-app, but encountered a dependency conflict error:

npm error Found: react@19.0.0
npm error node_modules/react
npm error   react@"^19.0.0" from the root project
npm error
npm error Could not resolve dependency:
npm error peer react@"^18.0.0" from @testing-library/react@13.4.0
npm error node_modules/@testing-library/react
npm error   @testing-library/react@"^13.0.0" from the root project

Root Causes

  • CLI attempting to install the latest React version (v19)
  • Template’s testing library requires React 18 version

Upon investigating the create-react-app GitHub repository, I discovered that the project has already been deprecated.

Github Issue

CRA Deprecation

Alternative Project Creation Methods

1. Vite

# Using npm
npm create vite@latest

# Using yarn
yarn create vite

2. Framework-Specific CLI Tools

Next.js - Supports SSR/SSG

npx create-next-app@latest

Remix - Full-stack Web Framework

npx create-remix

Gatsby - Specialized in Static Site Generation

npx create-gatsby

Expo - React Native Development

npx create-expo-app

Additional Context

  • React CRA Project PR Link
  • GitHub Issue Link

Key Takeaways

  • Create React App is deprecated
  • Modern alternatives like Vite offer better performance and developer experience
  • Framework-specific tools provide more specialized development environments