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:

/**
 * Copyright (c) Facebook, Inc. and its affiliates.
 *
 * This source code is licensed under the MIT license found in the
 * LICENSE file in the root directory of this source tree.
 *
 * @emails react-core
 */
'use strict';
let React;
let ReactDOM;
let ReactTestUtils;
let PropTypes;
const clone = function(o) {
  return JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(o));
};
const GET_INIT_STATE_RETURN_VAL = {
  hasWillMountCompleted: false,
  hasRenderCompleted: false,
  hasDidMountCompleted: false,
  hasWillUnmountCompleted: false,
};
const INIT_RENDER_STATE = {
  hasWillMountCompleted: true,
  hasRenderCompleted: false,
  hasDidMountCompleted: false,