New React Native project with old version of react native

Question

I am trying to create a new react native project which should utilize an older version of react-native.

The result I would like would be to do something like: react-native init MyProject but have the version of react-native it uses be 0.13.2.

However, there doesn't seem to be any options with react-native-cli for initializing with old versions of react-native.

Performing react-native init MyProject and then dowgrading react-native in package.json also does not work because the init command installs a bunch of xcode templates which are used to build the app and there is no dowgrade command which will dowgrade these templates. (There is an upgrade command.)

I tried downgrading my version of react-native-cli to 0.1.4 which was current when react-native 0.13 was current, but this did not work. From looking at the cli source, it seems it always initializes with just the newest version of react-native.

I realize this is pretty weird to want to start a new project at an old version, but I have a weird set of requirements that are forcing this.

Answer 1

There is a new parameter in react-native init that allows just this. Try:

react-native init --version="[email protected]" MyNewApp 

Here my source. I have successfully tested it with react-native-cli 2.0.1.

Answer 2

rninit is a replacement for react-native init that allows you to specify a particular version of react-native to use.

Install rninit globally:

npm install -g rninit 

Specify which version of react-native to use:

rninit init [Project Name] --source [email protected] 

Thanks to @vanson-wing-leung for pointing me to rninit