linter: react-hooks/refs flags the documented lazy ref initialization idiom

What version of oxlint are you using?

1.81.0

What did you expect to see?

No diagnostic. Lazily initializing a ref and then reading it is the pattern React documents under Avoiding recreating the ref contents, and [email protected] — whose refs rule is preset: Recommended, severity: Error — permits it.

What did you see instead?

react(refs): Cannot access refs during render, on const owner = ownerRef.current;.

Reproduction

.oxlintrc.json:

{
  "plugins": ["react"],
  "categories": { "correctness": "off", "suspicious": "off", "pedantic": "off", "perf": "off", "style": "off", "restriction": "off", "nursery": "off" },
  "rules": { "react-hooks/refs": "error" }
}

repro.ts:

import { useEffect, useRef } from 'react';

export const useOwner = (): symbol => {
  const ownerRef = useRef<symbol | null>(null);
  ownerRef.current ??= Symbol('owner');
  const owner = ownerRef.current;

  useEffect(() => {
    console.log(owner);
  }, [owner]);

  return owner;
};

Then oxlint .

Comparison with eslint-plugin-react-hooks

Running [email protected] with [email protected] and only react-hooks/refs: error reports nothing here.

That plugin silently bails its compiler pass on some constructs, so a zero from it can be vacuous. I checked for that: appending a component containing a known violation to the same file is reported, which proves the analyser reaches this code and is deliberately permitting the idiom rather than skipping the file.