Change:
// Check that the version we're exporting is the same one we expect in the // package. This is not an ideal way to do this, but makes sure that we keep // them in sync. <del> var reactVersionExp = /bReact.versions*=s*['"]([^'"]+)['"];/; </del> <ins> var reactVersionExp = /bREACT_VERSIONs*=s*['"]([^'"]+)['"];/; </ins> module.exports = function() { var reactVersion = reactVersionExp.exec(

Discussion:
People lose hours of work debugging a simple issue: two versions of React being loaded at the same time. Because there is no warning right away when this happens, they usually discover the problem through invariant violations. Some of them are descriptive (e.g. ) and I think I even saw warning that said something like "check if two copies of React are loaded", but some are really cryptic: . Is there a reason why we don't want to warn right away when two copies of React are loaded?
There's probably no good way to find out if two copies of React are loaded (CommonJS modules are the antithesis of sharing a global scope, they're literally two duplicate but separate modules). But I would expect React to be clever enough to figure out that, say, a component is a React component even if it's not from the same copy of React.
I think it's lesser evil to put some flag on , like , than to spend any more time on this.
Should be preferable to just extend (or w/e) with simple duck-typing that warns if it looks like a ReactElement but isn't... or something like that. It's free and doesn't interfere with intentionally running multiple React instances.
I think that in the future, this will actually just work. In the meantime we can warn here:
Would it catch all of the issues listed above though? Usually the problem comes up when some component or helper library loads its own version. Will we get to in this case? Besides, does React truly support independent Reacts on page right now? Do they not interfere in any way at all if they aren't mixed (e.g. browser event handling)?
(To clarify, I was referring to comment)
I might be mistaken, but ignoring weird hacks then the only issue with multiple instances of React are when ReactElements from different instances gets mixed up. Depending on which API you feed them to, you're going to see lots of different errors though. So yeah... I think that should take care of all, or most at the very least. As long as you never stop event propagation or mount them inside each other it should be OK I think (but still not great though). Good point.
Just a confirmation from someone who just flushed 3 hours of debugging time down the toilet that, yes, this issue is hard to debug, please make at least a warning.

In my case I was having a weird exception (TypeError: Cannot read property 'firstChild' of undefined) caused by the fact that a component created with a different (uninitialised) copy of React was carrying a _owner = null, thereby breaking findComponentRoot().
We should already be warning in the case that an element from one copy of React is passed to in another: I guess the cases here are when nesting elements from different versions inside each other?
Yes. At least it was in my case. Nested elements created from different React versions.
Just my 2cents: I had the same issue today and my problem was using browserify 8.1.3 instead of 8.1.1 Hope it helps
The other issue with this is you can't reliably use the dependency injection mechanism, e.g. to change the batching strategy, while using components from multiple modules where each has it's own instance of React as a dependency. Even if they are the same version of React.
+1 ; thanks gaearon
said: "The other issue with this is you can't reliably use the dependency injection mechanism, e.g. to change the batching strategy, while using components from multiple modules where each has it's own instance of React as a dependency. Even if they are the same version of React." This.
The main workaround many modular React components are using is to specify React as a -- the parent module must provide React to prevent multiple copies. This is problematic because are on track to because they introduce .
I've seen this a lot as well, and had lots of requests to switch React to a (+) in my packages which I'm currently resisting for reasons mentioned. The most common frustration I've seen is when npm subtly installs two versions of React, and Browserify (correctly) includes both in the build. It can happen unexpectedly w/ package updates and breakage ensues. A warning from React that "hey, there is more than one of me on the page" seems like the most elegant way to warn developers early and direct them to an explanation of what's gone wrong / how to fix it. It's a side-effect of npm's dependency rules and node's behaviour that I end up with two Reacts when I just want one.

Looks like things will get better with (see npm/npm) but in the meantime I agree with about adding a "lesser evil" hack: ... there's a good argument to be made that this isn't React's problem to solve, but since it's a common problem and React can solve it, I think it would be great if it did.
A solution I found with was to alias all calls like so (example shown with grunt): so it isn't impossible to fix, but I'd make the argument that since this is such a common issue it needs to be highlighted more clearly in the React docs.
when using browserify it can happen just when requiring two different versions of React because of the way it handles deduplication. Requires with the same path and code between the two versions can end up getting de-duped. Modules where the code/require path was changed between versions get deduplicated and others don't. So I encountered this: (from React v1) is evaluated and it mixes in ReactBrowserComponentMixin as part of its spec .Class.injectMixin(ReactBrowserComponentMixin) is evaluated and it adds ReactBrowserComponentMixin to all classes subsequently created by ReactClass.createClass (shared between React v1 and v2 because it didn't change between the two versions of React) (from React v2) is evaluated and it tries to mix in ReactBrowserComponentMixin twice, once from ReactDOMSelect's own spec and once from the global injected mixin list. As long as modules can be stateful, this approach to deduplication seems horrifically unsafe. I'll file an issue with Browserify itself, I haven't yet verified if Webpack would have the same issue. Either way - I think it would make sense to handle it specifically in React given how it can trip newcomers up.
Reverting for now (in ) as we sort out some problems.
THANK YOU for this discussion. I was battling with an Invariant Violation bug for half the day yesterday and then came across this ticket this morning. My setup was using a browserify-shimmed version of React and react-router loaded from CDN. After reading this discussion I just opted to use the npm versions of these libs and the error went away. This is my first React project so debugging this problem was a pretty big headache. Thanks again for this discussion as it lead me to figure out the problem and move forward.

Leaving details of my case for future searchers: I got the error "Invariant Violation: Could not find the drag and drop manager in the context of Card. Make sure to wrap the top-level component of your app with configureDragDropContext" Also turned out I had two React versions loaded. The problem was Webpack. I was using "npm link <folder" for one of my packages, which also depends on React. Seems webpack has problems handling symbolic links, or it's my fault configuring it improperly. Anyway, the problem was fixed by installing the package into my local node_modules directory.
Thanks for this, I'm gonna add it to the relevant explanation gist for React DnD.
Would like to have this too. Haven't figured out a way to get GitHub cc'd (rather than bcc'd) without explicitly participating, sorry for the noise.
There's a button :) 
I think that still doesn't CC you but only BCC, sadly. Moreover, I'm watching the repo already, but I have a different inbox for when GitHub CCs me.
Fyi: Ongoing PR
Fixed by , hopefully.
If it helps the next person googling, is yet another sign of this problem.
and counting... I've got this one: I'm looking everywhere for the sneaky react twin, but no luck. doesn't show any duplicates The other possibilities I've read about are double-loading the react script, webpack double-bundling, or react/addons causing trouble, so those are what I'm working on now. Insidious.
As you've hopefully set up correctly, then simply remove and reinstall everything, that usually fixes it unless there's some incorrectly configured module.
I tried to git clone the repo and reinstall, but that wasn't the issue. Eventually I noticed that the error was only happening after the first navigation (similar to this ) and started taking apart my navigation menu. Turns out that for some reason putting a from react-router inside a from react-boostrap was causing react to go nuts. I posted my findings on .
I think it also might have had something to do with my not using the generated from react-router as the root of my component hierarchy. I was wrapping it in a higher level-component that accepts my flux instance and passes it on as context.

Isolating the issue into gave me the following error:
The nested links thing is due to invalid HTML and we have a new warning for that in 0.14.
By the way I got that new warning a few days ago and it's beautiful, great work. :+1:
I'm getting this error: when using npm link to require a module I'm working on. I can't be 100% sure that it's caused by having multiple versions of React, but the error does go away when I just paste the npm module directly into my app instead of using it via npm link. I don't get this error when using my npm module the normal way (react is a dev dependency so I don't think it gets installed in node modules). Has anyone else run into this issue and come up with a fix? Thanks!
I got this error while running 0.14-rc1 and 0.14-beta3 together
Please do not report random problems in this issue. File new issues.
Seriously. This has taken me 3 days to figure out that my random error about unmounting the _mouseMoveTracker twice in fixed-data-table is caused by two reacts... This is not good that this bug seemingly can't be fixed? Why can React not just put the version number on the window object and never add itself again if it's there already? This is better than the hours and hours wasted by many people with this!
I thought we fixed this in 0.14 (); is it not displaying a warning?
Yep, I just upgraded to 0.14.2 everywhere (including inside the module) and somehow deleting react from nodemodules/react-datatable/nodemodules/ fixed my bug! (see here ). Maybe there is something wrong with my webpack config? It's weird that this fixed it. Is this having two of the identical version included a subtle variant on this bug?
Part of the problem is react-datatable having as a non-peer dependency (cc which can cause NPM to fetch a separate react installation for just that module.
Okay - thanks - I'll try adding this as a peer dep, however when I want to run the build for my module if developing the datatable from within my main project, what is the best way to accomplish this without issues?
you might try upgrading to , then .

has improvements in how it handles dependencies and is better about avoiding multiple instances of a given package, since it installs with a flat structure instead of nesting dependencies within packages. This, along with moving from to in a library I am writing, solved my similar problems.
Another 4 hours lost. My webpack config now is:
Can you say what symptom you experienced? Also, if you are using the prebuilt I would recommend using the prebuilt react- as well and using in your webpack config since the secret property is unstable and will change in the next version (hence its name).
yes, the problem was in prebuild version of React. The second instance of React came from require('react'). It did work somehow until React 0.14 migration. And even more: It work after partial code removal! This lead me to wrong way of long debugging. I agree, this is my fault. But I still expect something like: every time, instead of rare warning: after which I spent hours to find out whats wrong with my refs... It seems like it is very common problem, and it is have to be more detailed and have better documentation.
same issue with webpack and loading manually.
Is it still an issue to load more than one version of React on a page, even if those instances are managing totally separate DOM trees and aren't being explicitly instantiated as globals? Like if, say, I had a package with and as dependencies, and they both depended on different versions of React, with npm as the dependency manager, could they be used together on one page?
No, that should work now if both are on a recent version of React.
Could you please point me out what would be the behavior of React if , let say , we want to introduce a widget including React in a host page that has an older version of it and the possible workaround to make it work? Thanks
Old versions of React are probably only tripped up by data-reactid IDs in the DOM that it didn't generate. If you're doing only client-side rendering with your widget, it should only have a data-reactroot attribute and no data-reactid so there shouldn't be any conflict.
Just ran into problems again today when I accidentally had 16.4.2 and 16.5.0 installed in a project, no warning from React.

To make matters worse, the duplicate versions were caused by a bug in that ...
Was there any resolution as to whether or not this is possible and/or a good idea? It seems like it'd provide developers with useful information.
Project A uses React 16 wherein Project B uses React 15, Lets say Project A is package got used in Project B - can that work?
Would Preact and React have the same issue described here? I’m asking because I’m using single-spa for a platform play at a large company of distributed teams.
It sounds to me like there are two separate issues here: you have two different copies of the library loaded and in use anywhere on a page in separate components that don't interact with each other? you have components from two different bundles, each with their own copy of the library, interact with each other (eg. the function from one library receiving an element created with from the other library) I don't know about the status with modern versions of React. In the case of Preact (1) should be fine but since it does have some global state you could run into problems in situation (2). Please file an issue in the repository if you'd like to discuss further.
This appears to be a bad link.
For someone encountering this at the moment - does anyone have any tips on identifying the cause and debugging the issue? I've used the check from the hooks page (how I discovered this) which confirms I've got 2 instances loaded: I believe I'm doing things by the book, in a monorepo react, react-dom etc are all always . What steps would you recommend after this?