Investigate updating major version of React via @wordpress/data.

[techanvil]

Feature Description

Following on from the update to @wordpress/data 4.27.3 in #6356, which is the latest version of @wordpress/data that (via @wordpress/element) supports React 16, we should move on to update the major version of @wordpress/data, and consequently the major versions of @wordpress/element and thus React.

This issue is for an investigation into which specific version of @wordpress/data we can update to, aiming to ensure the upgrade is manageable and avoiding introducing too many breaking changes at once.

The most recent version of @wordpress/data at the time of writing is 8.0.0, which depends on @wordpress/element 5.0.0 and therefore React 18.2.0. This is obviously a bit of a leap from current versions and it's more likely that a manageable approach would be to first update to a specific @wordpress/data@5 version.

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Acceptance criteria

• The next @wordpress/data version to update to should be determined. If during the investigation it is found that the update is straightforward it can be done as part of this issue. If not (eg. if the update involves significant engineering effort), a follow-up issue should be created for the update itself.
• Assuming we don't update to the latest @wordpress/data, a followup issue, similar to this one, should be created for determining a subsequent upgrade, with a long term view to bringing us as up-to-date as possible.

Implementation Brief

Test Coverage

QA Brief

Changelog entry

[tofumatt]

ACs are largely good but I wanted to note that if the upgrades are straightforward (might be found during the IB process/engineering exploration this issue will be used for), it would make sense to do the upgrade in-place.

But I get this issue is largely about exploration. Moving to IB, though really the IB is more/less the ACs I think 🤔

[kuasha420]

Initial investigation

Although #6356 is EB which blocks this one, I had taken some time to look at this from a high level. After examining the source code and changelogs, I think we can realistically target v6.x of the @wordpress/data package where it adds support for React 17.

v5 doesn't add much that we'll need to use (maybe {start|finish}Resolutions would be nice to have). This is marked as major because it drops support for IE11 but from my understanding that is not relevant to us.

I'll pick it up for further exploration once the blocking issue has been worked on and merged.

[kuasha420]

Unassigning myself from this one since #6356 has gone back to IB due to unforeseen issues which blocks this one. Cheers cc @bethanylang