react_demo$ du -sh node_modules/
25M node_modules/
react_demo$ ls node_modules/|wc -l
79
react_demo$ cat $(find node_modules/ -type f ) | wc -l
287767
I think I installed react, react-dom, browserify (globally), babel. The exact details are not really important, being inexperienced with react I probably installed stuff that is not strictly necessary. However, the ease of pulling in a huge amount of dependent code makes me concerned. For a long lived stable application you will have to maintain those dependencies (at a minimum, have 3rd party maintainers who you can trust to maintain it, not break your app, not inject security issues into your app, etc).
Have had the same experience tonight - browserify etc 12 modules, 75MB, circa 12,000 files. I guess it's just the npm way but it's definitely a bit shocking for those of us who are unfamiliar with it.
But are those strictly react dependencies? Seems more like a demo that was doing a lot more than just using react. Eg, browserify is mentioned, but that's a totally separate project from react, completely orthogonal. So inexperience seems like a big factor here..
It's the ecosystem that's being complained about here it seems, rather than react specifically.
