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`@types/react@^18` in `dependencies` breaks type-checking in React 19 projects

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
50/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
react, typescript
Domain
build-system

Research direction

The problem is the @types/react entry under dependencies in the braintrust package manifest, added with #2191 for the braintrust/custom-views typings in dist/custom-views.d.ts. Read the manifest and check whether custom views need React types at all. The suggested fix moves @types/react to an optional peer dependency, which is a maintainer decision, so confirm the approach before editing. Done means a React 19 project installs no React 18 types, and custom-views consumers still type-check.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Summary

Since 3.33.0, braintrust lists @types/react: ^18.3.1 under dependencies. As far as I can tell it is only needed for the braintrust/custom-views type definitions (dist/custom-views.d.ts imports ReactNode from react), which came in with #2191.

Because it is a hard dependency, every consumer gets React 18 types installed, including projects that don't use custom views or don't use React at all. In a React 19 project, this can break tsc.

What happened

We use pnpm (workspace) and React 19 (@types/react@19). After upgrading braintrust from 3.32.0 to 3.35.0, pnpm hoisted @types/[email protected] into node_modules/.pnpm/node_modules. Packages that import types from react without declaring @types/react themselves (in our case @sentry/react) then resolved React 18 types, while our own code used React 19 types. tsc --noEmit failed with errors like this:

error TS2322: Type 'React.ReactNode' is not assignable to type 'import(".../@[email protected]/node_modules/@types/react/index").ReactNode'.
  Type 'ReactElement<unknown, string | JSXElementConstructor<any>>' is not assignable to type 'ReactNode'.
    Property 'children' is missing in type 'ReactElement<unknown, string | JSXElementConstructor<any>>' but required in type 'ReactPortal'.

We work around it with a pnpm override ("braintrust>@types/react": "^19"), or by staying on 3.32.0.

Versions
  • braintrust: 3.33.0 – 3.37.1 (not in 3.32.0)
  • @types/react in the project: 19.2.x
  • Package manager: pnpm 11 (workspace)
Suggestion

Declare @types/react (and react, if needed) as an optional peer dependency, for example:

"peerDependencies": {
  "@types/react": ">=18"
},
"peerDependenciesMeta": {
  "@types/react": { "optional": true }
}

That way, projects that use custom views get the @types/react they already have, whatever its version, and other projects don't get React types installed at all.

Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
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Forks
15
Avg merge
1d 20h
Merged PRs (30d)
70

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