We're switching Atom to React, but we want to support backward-compatible shims to our previous view framework.

In the old framework, views were represented as jQuery-wrapped DOM elements. Ideally, we'd like to provide backward-compatible shims by simply rendering the React component and wrapping its root element in a jQuery wrapper with an API that's compatible to our old editor views. That would essentially look like this:

``` javascript
var editorRoot = document.createElement('div')
React.renderComponentWithRootElement(Editor(props), editorRoot)

// the element would actually be wrapped in a custom subclass of jQuery,
// but this is clearer for this example
var editorShim = $(editorRoot) 
```

Currently, this isn't possible because React components need to be rendered into a container. So instead we need to create a wrapper element and render the component inside it. This is sad because it adds an extra layer of markup which confuses styling, and also means that the editor has a wrapper when used via the shim layer but no wrapper when embedded as a child via React itself.

Is there something fundamental preventing React from adopting DOM nodes directly without the parent? Is this something we could even hack in in a way that would be somewhat maintainable?

:heart:

state = {clicked: false};
      onClick = () => {
        this.setState({clicked: true});
      };
      render() {
        const className = this.state.clicked ? 'was-clicked' : '';
        if (this.props.aNew === 'prop') {
          return (
            <a href="#" onClick={this.onClick} className={className}>
              Test link
            </a>
          );
        } else {
          return (
            <div>
              <span className="child1" />
              <span className="child2" />
            </div>
          );
        }
      }
    }