> So one day, you have a (in my case, small) set of libraries to get things going. Then 2 years after, compilation issues as they all have different requirements. So you have to find another common intersection between them and the node/react-native versions.

That's what the whole version control thing that I mentioned is good for. Check out a two-year old copy that resolves to a faithful reproduction of whatever it was you were able to use successfully when you first checked it in.