# React v17.0 Release Candidate: No New Features

DevFeed: [React v17.0 Release Candidate: No New Features](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/react-v17-0-release-candidate-no-new-features-22340.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://reactjs.org/blog/2020/08/10/react-v17-rc.html>)

Published: 2020-08-10T00:00:00Z

Content type: release

Language: en

Sources: [React](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/react.md>)

Topics: [React](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/react.md>), [upgrade](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/upgrade.md>)

Tags: [blog](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/blog.md>), [features](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/features.md>), [react](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/react.md>), [release](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/release.md>)

## AI overview

The React 17 Release Candidate focuses on making React easier to upgrade rather than adding new developer-facing features. It introduces a safer path for gradual upgrades and for embedding trees managed by different React versions.

## Source excerpt

This blog site has been archived. Go to react.dev/blog to see the recent posts. Today, we are publishing the first Release Candidate for React 17. It has been two and a half years since the previous major release of React, which is a long time even by our standards! In this blog post, we will describe the role of this major release, what changes you can expect in it, and how you can try this release. No New Features The React 17 release is unusual because it doesn't add any new developer-facing features. Instead, this release is primarily focused on making it easier to upgrade React itself. We're actively working on the new React features, but they're not a part of this release. The React 17 release is a key part of our strategy to roll them out without leaving anyone behind. In particular, React 17 is a "stepping stone" release that makes it safer to embed a tree managed by one version of React inside a tree managed by a different version of React. Gradual Upgrades For the past seven years, React upgrades have been "all-or-nothing". Either you stay on an old version, or you upgrade your whole app to a new version. There was no in-between. This has worked out so far, but we are running into the limits of the "all-or-nothing" upgrade strategy. Some API changes, for example, deprecating the legacy context API, are impossible to do in an automated way. Even though most apps written today don't ever use them, we still support them in React. We have to choose between supporting them in React indefinitely or leaving some apps behind on an old version of React. Both of these options aren't great. So we wanted to provide another option. React 17 enables gradual React upgrades. When you upgrade from React 15 to 16 (or, soon, from React 16 to 17), you would usually upgrade your whole app at once. This works well for many apps. But it can get increasingly challenging if the codebase was written more than a few years ago and isn't actively maintained. And while it's possible to