Why not just destructure other properties such as createClass as well?

var {createClass, PropTypes} = require('react');

@sebmarkbage Because React needs to be in scope for JSX's React.createElement and React.__spead

Oh and the displayName transform also depends on explicitly calling React.createClass
https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/5ab7fde/vendor/fbtransform/transforms/reactDisplayName.js#L20-L22

this can be done by

let React = require('react');
let { PropTypes, createClass } = React;

or even

import React, {propTypes} from 'react';

@chicoxyzzy This change is for convenience. So two variable declaration statements kinda negates the point - that's what I do now anyway. And, the import works with babel but not with jstransform.

FYI, on react native, the convention we adopted is

var React = require('react-native');
var {
  Image,
  StyleSheet,
  Text,
  View,
  ix,
} = React;

@vjeux if the pattern is pretty established, then I can close this out

I talked with @sebmarkbage yesterday. Basically, we netted out that this is going to be a larger issue as we move into a world where more people are using destructuring and ES6 modules. It's slightly inconvenient to do this across 2 statements, but it's also weird to create circular references to save a line of code. It's unfortunate that our own transforms depend on React being in scope but that's where we are for now.

Let's leave it as is for now and if a widespread pattern (which might just be what you proposed) shakes out soon, we'll look at adopting it.