In development for nearly two years, the 0.12 release of Node.js is about to
become available. Whether the release can mend the now-fractured community
that has been built around the popular server-side JavaScript platform
remains to be seen.
Officials at Node.js steward Joyent and at Strongloop, which is involved in
Node.js development, provided InfoWorld details about the upcoming release,
for which the download should become available today.
Version 0.12 will feature round-robin clustering, providing for better
distribution of Node.js across processor cores. It also will have
performance optimizations including reduced garbage-collector strain.
Profiling APIs in 0.12 improve memory management. Users also can run
multiple instances in a single process via a multicontext capability.
Clustered apps can be debugged with the Node-Inspector capability. Also
supported is execSync, a synchronous API for child processes. There are also
improvements in the TLS (Transport Layer Security) function.
Although the Node community at large might breathe a collective sigh of
relief that version 0.12 is finally here, frustration with the pace of
upgrades to the platform was a principal reason for the recent forking of
Node.js, via the io.js fork. Strongloop's Bert Belder, who is deeply
involved in both the development of Node.js as well as io.js, said he still
expects to be working on both projects. Io.js went to a beta release last
month. It features capabilities now being fitted into Node.js 0.12, such as
round-robin clustering and virtual machine improvements, Belder said.
A founder of API server vendor Strongloop, Belder is a Node core contributor
and a member of the io.js technical committee. He said he anticipates a
reconciliation between the two factions at some point, hopefully within a
half year. Right now, there are two versions of Node.js (also called Node),
thanks to the io.js fork. "I think it's wasteful to have to have two
projects," Belder said. Io.js proponents "really took that position that we
wanted to release really frequently."
Asked about the io.js fork, Joyent's TJ Fontaine, project lead for Node.js,
avoided any criticism, saying he welcomed more participation in JavaScript
at the server level, which io.js enables. "It's a fantastic opportunity for
Node.js."
Beyond version 0.12, the focus for Node.js will be on reconciliation in the
Node.js community and improving the governance model, Belder said. Fontaine
said discussions about an eventual 1.0 release of Node.js are expected to
happen at the Node Summit conference in San Francisco next week.
Although proponents see Node.js as production-ready now, the 1.0 release
would have to ensure that no APIs are broken, and to do that APIs that need
to change have to be identified first, Fontaine said. "[Version] 1.0 is an
important step, and it means that we will be supporting these APIs in
perpetuity."
This story, "Two years in the making, Node.js upgrade arrives" was
originally published by InfoWorld.