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Node.js 5.0 Released

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Re: Node.js 5.0 Released

#51

Post by tdaltonc »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #44

So there seems to be folks complaining about how fast this release was and other folks saying it's not a big deal because 4.2.x is LTS. But I don't see anyone addressing the actual issue of breaking changes in node: npm. What does a module author do? If my module uses an API that was changed in 5.x, do I only support 4.2.x, do I only support 5.x or do I write in some hacks to try and check between the two? What if 6.…

How is this different form any other package tool?

PIP authors have python2/3, Julia pkg, ubuntu apt-get, ect. What's special about working with npm?

Re: Node.js 5.0 Released

#52

Post by talles »

vonklaus wrote: post #26

I found this out last night at 3am after rushing to provision a server. i don't have a great handle on semver or dev cycles, point ceded, but they released 4.2 on october 12th. thats like .1 every 2 days.

People have to lose this idea that the version numbers indicates time. It doesn't.

(for semver at least)

Re: Node.js 5.0 Released

#54

Post by amarraja »

We use node on Windows for our asset minifiers, hopefully the new version of NPM will make this a little more pleasant!

Your dependencies will now be installed maximally flat. Insofar as is possible, all of your dependencies, and their dependencies, and THEIR dependencies will be installed in your project's node_modules folder with no nesting. You'll only see modules nested underneath one another when two (or more) modules have conflicting dependencies.

Re: Node.js 5.0 Released

#55

Post by callahad »

coldtea wrote: post #48
merpnderp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why this urge to keep up to the latest and greatest? Especially for a transpiler? If it is converting your code just fine, why update?

Because if you don't, then a year or two down the road you're left with an unsupported legacy hell.

Node.js modules: from brand new to "unsupported legacy hell" in "a year or two."

There's no way this is sustainable, but I'm at a loss of how to fix it, especially when the ECMAScript language itself is evolving at such a rapid pace. Any ideas?

Re: Node.js 5.0 Released

#56

Post by tkone »

coldtea wrote: post #50
joshstrange wrote: post #35

Good lord people... 1. There is no one forcing you to upgrade, 4.2 is LTS, you've got 2yrs+ 2. 5.0 followed 4.0 so closely because 4.0 was the iojs/node merge and 5.0 was to correspond with the new V8 release, future major bumps will be closer to 6mo (to match V8)

> 1. There is no one forcing you to upgrade, 4.2 is LTS, you've got 2yrs+ And in 2 years, when we take a peak we see that the changes amassed in between by the non LTS releases are so big we have to pretty much rewrite all of our codebase if we want to continue getting support....

i have an app that was written for 0.8 three years ago. it is running on 4.2 with no modification. (it doesn't use any binary add ons). javascript is almost entirely backwards compatible because they can't break the web.

Other apps that require binary add ons required me to install the latest versions from NPM -- one one of them required ANY changes to how the API was called and it was extremely minor.

Waiting 2 years to upgrade the engine your code is running on is not horrible and requires much less pain

Re: Node.js 5.0 Released

#57

Post by csvan »

merpnderp wrote: post #32
cdnsteve wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then you have to keep up with Babel changes too... http://babeljs.io/blog/2015/10/29/6.0.0/

Why this urge to keep up to the latest and greatest? Especially for a transpiler? If it is converting your code just fine, why update?

In the case of Babel - performance. Even with all the fantastic work that has been done on it so far, good luck avoiding massive transpile times for non-trivial ES6 code bases. I imagine TypeScripts (and other) transpilers have the same issue.

Re: Node.js 5.0 Released

#58

Post by EvanPlaice »

I'm not sure why so many people are freaking out.

Looking at the changelog, it looks like they decided to commit a bunch of breaking changes that were previously marked as deprecated. If your code was running before without warnings, upgrading shouldn't have a negative impact.

The pace of change is fast because node ES6 support is progressing fast enough to maintain near 1:1 feature parity with v8. A bunch of ES6 features still haven't been fully implemented in v8 but that's not the fault of the Node.js dev team.

If the dev team has committed to LTS for 4.2 that means they're likely planning to backport new features to the 4x branch. No reason to panic. Many of the more useful features of ES6 already work perfectly in 4.2.

Re: Node.js 5.0 Released

#59

Post by devy »

tdaltonc wrote: post #51
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #44

So there seems to be folks complaining about how fast this release was and other folks saying it's not a big deal because 4.2.x is LTS. But I don't see anyone addressing the actual issue of breaking changes in node: npm. What does a module author do? If my module uses an API that was changed in 5.x, do I only support 4.2.x, do I only support 5.x or do I write in some hacks to try and check between the two? What if 6.…

How is this different form any other package tool? PIP authors have python2/3, Julia pkg, ubuntu apt-get, ect. What's special about working with npm?

Python community doesn't release new versions nearly as fast. Every major python version release, there is usually a PEP announcing the schedule new version release date far in advance for the community to prepare.

To me, Node community just release new versions fast and furious. If the committers won't, then there are people who jump out and fork the project.

Of course there are the other extreme of long release cycles like Debian but there are good reasons for that.

IMMO, a mature large community of an open source project community should always take the package ecosystem into considering when introducing new versions or breaking changes.

PS: I was pretty annoyed that one of the npm package I used a lot `aglio` is broken again on 5.0.0 after I filed a ticket for the compatibly issue with 4.2.1. This ticket has just been closed a few days ago and is only less than two weeks old!

https://github.com/danielgtaylor/aglio/issues/183

Re: Node.js 5.0 Released

#60

Post by antjanus »

tkone wrote: post #56
coldtea wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. There is no one forcing you to upgrade, 4.2 is LTS, you've got 2yrs+ And in 2 years, when we take a peak we see that the changes amassed in between by the non LTS releases are so big we have to pretty much rewrite all of our codebase if we want to continue getting support....

i have an app that was written for 0.8 three years ago. it is running on 4.2 with no modification. (it doesn't use any binary add ons). javascript is almost entirely backwards compatible because they can't break the web. Other apps that require binary add ons required me to install the latest versions from NPM -- one one of them required ANY changes to how the API was called and it was extremely minor. Waiting 2 year…

this is such a good point. I was running on the same version, then I upgraded to 0.10, 0.11, and finally 0.12 and run test on ioJS. There were no major changes to be made.

I think I'll just add Node 5.0 to CI and see if it passes and that's all there is to it really.

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