Setting Up React with Vite: A Quick Guide

The React team has announced the deprecation of their create-react-app starter configuration. You can read more about the history and the rationale behind this decision on their blog post.

As a student of Bruno Simon’s ThreeJS Journey course, I discovered a better way to build React apps. In his ‘first-react-application’ lesson, he covers setting up React with Vite. Here’s a condensed version of his advice:

1. Install Node.js if you haven’t already.
2. Run npm create vite@latest and follow the interactive CLI menu instructions.

Here is a sample of what the process looks like:

__yourprompt__  on    main ▓▒░ npm create vite@latest

Need to install the following packages:
create-vite@6.3.1
Ok to proceed? (y) y

> threejs-journey-exercise@0.0.0 npx
> create-vite

│
◇  Project name:
│  vite-react-example
│
◇  Select a framework:
│  React
│
◇  Select a variant:
│  JavaScript
│
◇  Scaffolding project in /Users/...
│
└  Done. Now run:

    cd vite-react-example
    npm install
    npm run dev

That’s it! It works like a charm. Bruno’s course goes into much more depth, and I highly recommend it.

I haven’t tried any of the other frameworks or build tools suggested on the react.dev post. You might find that one of these alternatives works better for you. However, if you need to get up and running quickly with React in a post create-react-app world, I hope this helps.