Outstanding issues preventing a release

[dannyhw]

Main issues

1. 6.4 and 6.5 storybook support [6.0] support new storybook architecture being introduced with 6.4 #284
2. decorators repeatedly applying

• seems related to "Cannot add an args enhancer to the store after a story has been added" [6.0] Cannot add an args enhancer to the store after a story has been added. #327
• fast reload/hot reload problems maybe somewhat related

4. outstanding PRs, this is something I need to get on top of.

I would also like to do some more manual testing and create some example apps to find bugs and get a feel for if things are ready.

One potential alternative would be to just release with the current solution (bugs included) and then release patches to fix issues. However I feel that not supporting version 6.4+ versions of storybook is somewhat of a deal breaker because it will cause problems for those who aren't aware of the current incompatibilities.
Open to community feedback on this.

Also I think some collaboration on this would really help get things over the line so if there's anyone out there wanting to lend a hand let me know.

Also important

1. re-introduce web socket support
2. new storybook cli script for added react native storybook to a project
3. new tutorial for react native storybook

Other improvements/ nice to have

There is a series of issues in the todo column that would be nice to have, however could be 6.1 features.

https://github.com/storybookjs/react-native/projects/2

Current architecture

Heres an image that might help to understand how the project is layed out

storybook 6.4 support

Shared dependencies from storybook will break react native storybook when using version 6.4 and above.

One problem with this is that a large rework of the preview and main ondeviceui components will be needed and that might effect other changes that make it harder to work in parallel. However I think this shouldn't stop other progress from being made, conflicts are normal and can be overcome.

Why and what

In 6.4 changes were made to story store to enable lazy loading stories, in this new architecture stories are loaded only when they are needed and improves performance for webpack compilation and so on. These changes are not backwards compatible for react native, meaning that basically nothing works if you bring in @storybook/store v6.4.

This is also introduced a new concept called the story index which is the list of all the file paths that could be loaded.

Work was started on a 6.5 branch to attempt to modernize the integration with storystore etc so that it would work with 6.4 however I got stuck with some stuff not loading correctly.

the progress is here, but its imcomplete
https://github.com/storybookjs/react-native/tree/next-6.5

hot reload problems

For a really long time now there has been some issues with fast refresh in react native storybook (even in 5.3). However there seems to be some new issues that crop up depending on the user setup.

#327 needs further investigation to see if there is a larger problem

#222 provides a potential solution for some hot reload things, however it won't work with storiesOf syntax so we would need to decide to drop official support for that probably.

Also module reloading is something that is a bit of a mystery to me so I've not really been able to figure it out, any outside help would be great.

[dannyhw]

All these problems should now be resolved with #384