@ 261105.16raw
current
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Node.js 21 ChangeLog

Current
21.7.3
21.7.2
21.7.1
21.7.0
21.6.2
21.6.1
21.6.0
21.5.0
21.4.0
21.3.0
21.2.0
21.1.0
21.0.0

2024-04-10, Version 21.7.3 (Current), @RafaelGSS

This is a security release.

Notable Changes

Commits

2024-04-03, Version 21.7.2 (Current), @RafaelGSS prepared by @marco-ippolito

This is a security release.

Notable changes

Commits

2024-03-08, Version 21.7.1 (Current), @targos

Notable Changes

This release reverts #51389, which landed in Node.js 21.7.0. It is a documented feature that t.after() hooks are run even if a test has no subtests. The hook can be used to clean up the test itself.

Commits

2024-03-06, Version 21.7.0 (Current), @RafaelGSS prepared by @marco-ippolito

Text Styling

A new API has been created to format text based on util.inspect.colors, enabling you to style text in different colors (such as red, blue, …) and emphasis (italic, bold, …).

const { styleText } = require('node:util');
const errorMessage = styleText('red', 'Error! Error!');
console.log(errorMessage);

Contributed by Rafael Gonzaga and Hemanth HM in #51850.

Loading and parsing environment variables

Contributed by Yagiz Nizipli in #51476

Support for multi-line values for .env file

Node.js 21.7.0 will now support multi-line values in the .env file:

MULTI_LINE="HELLO
WORLD"

Contributed by Ilyas Shabi #51289

sea: support embedding assets

Users can now include assets by adding a key-path dictionary to the configuration as the assets field. At build time, Node.js would read the assets from the specified paths and bundle them into the preparation blob. In the generated executable, users can retrieve the assets using the sea.getAsset() and sea.getAssetAsBlob() API.

{
  "main": "/path/to/bundled/script.js",
  "output": "/path/to/write/the/generated/blob.blob",
  "assets": {
    "a.jpg": "/path/to/a.jpg",
    "b.txt": "/path/to/b.txt"
  }
}

The single-executable application can access the assets as follows:

const { getAsset } = require('node:sea');
// Returns a copy of the data in an ArrayBuffer
const image = getAsset('a.jpg');
// Returns a string decoded from the asset as UTF8.
const text = getAsset('b.txt', 'utf8');
// Returns a Blob containing the asset without copying.
const blob = getAssetAsBlob('a.jpg');

Contributed by Joyee Cheung in #50960

vm: support using the default loader to handle dynamic import()

This patch adds support for using vm.constants.USE_MAIN_CONTEXT_DEFAULT_LOADER as the importModuleDynamically option in all vm APIs that take this option except vm.SourceTextModule. This allows users to have a shortcut to support dynamic import() in the compiled code without missing the compilation cache if they don’t need customization of the loading process. We emit an experimental warning when the import() is actually handled by the default loader through this option instead of requiring --experimental-vm-modules.

const { Script, constants } = require('node:vm');
const { resolve } = require('node:path');
const { writeFileSync } = require('node:fs');

// Write test.js and test.txt to the directory where the current script
// being run is located.
writeFileSync(resolve(__dirname, 'test.mjs'),
              'export const filename = "./test.json";');
writeFileSync(resolve(__dirname, 'test.json'),
              '{"hello": "world"}');

// Compile a script that loads test.mjs and then test.json
// as if the script is placed in the same directory.
const script = new Script(
  `(async function() {
    const { filename } = await import('./test.mjs');
    return import(filename, { with: { type: 'json' } })
  })();`,
  {
    filename: resolve(__dirname, 'test-with-default.js'),
    importModuleDynamically: constants.USE_MAIN_CONTEXT_DEFAULT_LOADER,
  });

// { default: { hello: 'world' } }
script.runInThisContext().then(console.log);

Contributed by Joyee Cheung in #51244

crypto: implement crypto.hash()

This patch introduces a helper crypto.hash() that computes a digest from the input at one shot. This can be 1.2-2x faster than the object-based createHash() for smaller inputs (<= 5MB) that are readily available (not streamed) and incur less memory overhead since no intermediate objects will be created.

const crypto = require('node:crypto');

// Hashing a string and return the result as a hex-encoded string.
const string = 'Node.js';
// 10b3493287f831e81a438811a1ffba01f8cec4b7
console.log(crypto.hash('sha1', string));

Contributed by Joyee Cheung in #51044

Other Notable Changes

Commits

2024-02-14, Version 21.6.2 (Current), @RafaelGSS

Notable changes

This is a security release.

Notable changes

Commits

2024-01-22, Version 21.6.1 (Current), @RafaelGSS

Notable Changes

This release fixes a bug in undici using WebStreams

Commits

2024-01-15, Version 21.6.0 (Current), @RafaelGSS

New connection attempt events

Three new events were added in the net.createConnection flow:

Additionally, a previous bug has been fixed where a new connection attempt could have been started after a previous one failed and after the connection was destroyed by the user. This led to a failed assertion.

Contributed by Paolo Insogna in #51045.

Changes to the Permission Model

Node.js 21.6.0 comes with several fixes for the experimental permission model and two new semver-minor commits. We’re adding a new flag --allow-addons to enable addon usage when using the Permission Model.

node --experimental-permission --allow-addons

Contributed by Rafael Gonzaga in #51183

And relative paths are now supported through the --allow-fs-* flags. Therefore, with this release one can use:

node --experimental-permission --allow-fs-read=./index.js

To give only read access to the entrypoint of the application.

Contributed by Rafael Gonzaga and Carlos Espa in #50758

Support configurable snapshot through --build-snapshot-config flag

We are adding a new flag --build-snapshot-config to configure snapshots through a custom JSON configuration file.

node --build-snapshot-config=/path/to/myconfig.json

When using this flag, additional script files provided on the command line will not be executed and instead be interpreted as regular command line arguments.

These changes were contributed by Joyee Cheung and Anna Henningsen in #50453

Other Notable Changes

Commits

2023-12-19, Version 21.5.0 (Current), @RafaelGSS

Notable Changes

Deprecations

Commits

2023-12-05, Version 21.4.0 (Current), @targos

Notable Changes

This release fixes a regression introduced in v21.3.0 that caused the fs.writeFileSync method to throw when called with 'utf8' encoding, no flag option, and if the target file didn’t exist yet.

Commits

2023-11-30, Version 21.3.0 (Current), @RafaelGSS

Notable Changes

New --disable-warning flag

This version adds a new --disable-warning option that allows users to disable specific warnings either by code (i.e. DEP0025) or type (i.e. DeprecationWarning, ExperimentalWarning).

This option works alongside existing --warnings and --no-warnings.

For example, the following script will not emit DEP0025 require('node:sys') when executed with node --disable-warning=DEP0025:

import sys from 'node:sys';

Contributed by Ethan-Arrowood in #50661

Update Root Certificates to NSS 3.95

This is the certdata.txt from NSS 3.95, released on 2023-11-16.

This is the version of NSS that will ship in Firefox 121 on 2023-12-19.

Certificates added:

Certificates removed:

Fast fs.writeFileSync with UTF-8 Strings

Enhanced writeFileSync functionality by implementing a highly efficient fast path primarily in C++ for UTF8-encoded string data. Additionally, optimized the appendFileSync method by leveraging the improved writeFileSync functionality. For simplicity and performance considerations, the current implementation supports only string data, as benchmark results raise concerns about the efficacy of using Buffer for this purpose. Future optimizations and expansions may be explored, but for now, the focus is on maximizing efficiency for string data operations.

Contributed by CanadaHonk in #49884.

Other Notable Changes

Commits

2023-11-14, Version 21.2.0 (Current), @targos

Notable Changes

Commits

2023-10-24, Version 21.1.0 (Current), @targos

Notable Changes

Automatically detect and run ESM syntax

The new flag --experimental-detect-module can be used to automatically run ES modules when their syntax can be detected. For “ambiguous” files, which are .js or extensionless files with no package.json with a type field, Node.js will parse the file to detect ES module syntax; if found, it will run the file as an ES module, otherwise it will run the file as a CommonJS module. The same applies to string input via --eval or STDIN.

We hope to make detection enabled by default in a future version of Node.js. Detection increases startup time, so we encourage everyone — especially package authors — to add a type field to package.json, even for the default "type": "commonjs". The presence of a type field, or explicit extensions such as .mjs or .cjs, will opt out of detection.

Contributed by Geoffrey Booth in #50096.

vm: fix V8 compilation cache support for vm.Script

Previously repeated compilation of the same source code using vm.Script stopped hitting the V8 compilation cache after v16.x when support for importModuleDynamically was added to vm.Script, resulting in a performance regression that blocked users (in particular Jest users) from upgrading from v16.x.

The recent fixes landed in v21.1.0 allow the compilation cache to be hit again for vm.Script when --experimental-vm-modules is not used even in the presence of the importModuleDynamically option, so that users affected by the performance regression can now upgrade. Ongoing work is also being done to enable compilation cache support for vm.CompileFunction.

Contributed by Joyee Cheung in #50137.

Other Notable Changes

Commits

2023-10-17, Version 21.0.0 (Current), @RafaelGSS and @targos

We’re excited to announce the release of Node.js 21! Highlights include updates of the V8 JavaScript engine to 11.8, stable fetch and WebStreams, a new experimental flag to change the interpretation of ambiguous code from CommonJS to ES modules (--experimental-default-type), many updates to our test runner, and more!

Node.js 21 will replace Node.js 20 as our ‘Current’ release line when Node.js 20 enters long-term support (LTS) later this month. As per the release schedule, Node.js 21 will be ‘Current’ release for the next 6 months, until April 2024.

Other Notable Changes

Semver-Major Commits

Semver-Minor Commits

Semver-Patch Commits