React from NPM cannot be used on the client because 'development' is not defined. The bundle was generated from Webpack

Question

I'm creating a React Node.js app and I'm trying to generate a Webpack bundle containing the React source code I loaded from NPM.

However, it seems that the React code from NPM cannot be used directly in the client. It triggers this error:

Uncaught ReferenceError: development is not defined

The code that triggers the exception is from the React code:

Is there anything I can do to make that work?

EDIT

This is my webpack.config.js:

import _ from 'lodash';
import webpack from 'webpack';
import yargs from 'yargs';
import ExtractTextPlugin from 'extract-text-webpack-plugin';

export default {
    entry: {
        bundle: './src/client.js'
    },

    output: {
        filename: '[name].js',
        path: './dist/assets',
        publicPath: '/assets/'
    },

    externals: undefined,

    resolve: {
        extensions: ['', '.js', '.json']
    },

    module: {
        loaders: [
            {test: /\.js/, loader: 'babel?optional=es7.objectRestSpread!client', exclude: /node_modules/ },
            {test: /\.css/, loader: ExtractTextPlugin.extract("style-loader", "css-loader")},
            {test: /\.less$/, loader:  ExtractTextPlugin.extract("style-loader", "css-loader!less-loader")},
            {test: /\.json$/, loader: 'json'},
            {test: /\.jpe?g$|\.gif$|\.png$/, loader: 'file?name=[name].[ext]'},
            {test: /\.eot$|\.ttf$|\.svg$|\.woff2?$/, loader: 'file?name=[name].[ext]'}
        ]
    },

    plugins: [
        new webpack.DefinePlugin({
            'process.env': {
                'NODE_ENV': 'development'
            },
            'development': true
        }),
        new ExtractTextPlugin('[name].css')
    ]
};

My client.js file only contains this line (for the purpose of debugging this issue):

import React from 'react';

And here is the resulting bundle

Answer 1

Any values passed to webpack.DefinePlugin as strings are treated as code fragments—that is to say, using

new webpack.DefinePlugin({
  ENV: "development"
});

with the code

console.log(ENV);

results in

console.log(development);

Instead, you want

new webpack.DefinePlugin({
  ENV: "\"development\""
});

which will result in

console.log("development");

---

To fix your issue, change your plugins to

plugins: [
    new webpack.DefinePlugin({
        'process.env': {
            'NODE_ENV': "'development'"
        }
    }),
    new ExtractTextPlugin('[name].css')
]

I usually allow webpack to read from process.env.NODE_ENV so that React minifies properly when you run webpack with NODE_ENV=production:

new webpack.DefinePlugin({
  "process.env": { NODE_ENV: JSON.stringify(process.env.NODE_ENV || "development") }
})