react-native: Incorrect Babel transforms when running with "npm link"

Description

If you use “npm link” (or “yarn link”) on a React Native component repository imported by your main repository, the wrong Babel presets are used in the component repository.

Edit: the Babel error is fixable by adding the correct devDependencies in the component, but doing so exposes other problems during packaging. See below for updated repro steps.

Reproduction

https://github.com/artdent/NpmLinkDemo demonstrates the problem. This is a stock repository created from react-native init 0.37.0, with one extra commit to import and use an arbitrary component, ‘react-native-snap-carousel’.

Component repository:

git clone https://github.com/archriss/react-native-snap-carousel
cd react-native-snap-carousel
yarn link

Main repository:

git clone https://github.com/artdent/NpmLinkDemo
cd NpmLinkDemo
yarn install
yarn link react-native-snap-carousel
npm start
react-native run-ios

Expected behavior: the component attempts to render. Actual behavior: SyntaxError /Users/jacob/triggr/react-bug-repro/react-native-snap-carousel/index.js: Unexpected token (6:21)

The SyntaxError is on the ‘static’ keyword, which should be permitted by react-native Babel preset. Likewise with the spread operator. If you remove those unsupported features, you get syntax errors at the places that use JSX.

I had to do two workarounds in react-native-snap-carousel to get it working as it did without ‘yarn link’: add a .babelrc with the react-native preset, and add react as an explicit dependency. Neither of these should be necessary. (And the latter can cause version collisions very quickly.)

I believe that this is not the same issue as #637 (initial symlink support for the packager) or #4968 (nonspecific import resolution caching problems).

Additional Information

• React Native version: 0.37.0
• Other versions: yarn 0.16.1, npm 3.9.5, node 6.2.2, react-native-cli 1.2.0, react 15.3.1
• Platform: both
• Operating System: MacOS