Publishing And Maintaining A React Native Library

Malbranche describes fixing and combining existing WebView forks after his team needed a working WebView to reuse its website in a React Native app. After Facebook opened core components to community maintenance, the project grew to more than 100 releases and 100 contributors.

At first, Malbranche tried to answer everyone immediately, even keeping GitHub notifications on his phone. He learned to protect his time and ask issue reporters for enough context. He recommends issue and pull request templates, guidance for newcomers, and giving contributors ownership so the work does not depend on one maintainer.

Malbranche recommends Prettier and ESLint to keep code style consistent, and TypeScript or Flow to catch problems and provide autocomplete. He also uses GitHub Actions to run tests and automate pull request handling, reducing manual work.

With semantic-release, commit or pull request labels determine the version change: fixes trigger patch releases, features trigger minor releases, and breaking changes trigger major releases. Malbranche demonstrates merging a small iOS fix and explains that automatic releases can give contributors quick feedback while semantic versioning helps protect users. The live release did not finish during the talk.