[v6] Why is NavLink and Link not the same component?

[rwieruch]

Is there a reason why there is an extra NavLink component just to access the isActive flag? I would think that in a perfect world, the Link component would just have this feature and there wouldn't be the need for another NavLink component.

[mjackson]

<NavLink> is really just a simple example of how to build a link that knows whether or not it is "active" by matching the beginning of the URL pathname. This is a common case in React Router because nested URL paths often correspond to nested UI.

There are other times when you might want a link to be active, such as when the URL contains a certain query parameter. For more complex cases, we provide the hooks for you to build your own <NavLink> as demonstrated in this example.