What is new in v6?

[mikeal]

Since v6 release is imminent we need to get together a good list of high level things we can say are in the new release.

[jasnell]

See: https://github.com/jasnell/node/blob/v6-rc1/CHANGELOG.md

[jasnell]

That's not a complete listing. Apparently I forgot to update the notable changes in the changelog when I cut RC.2. Will fix that in RC.3. The big omission there, of course, is the v8 v5 update but there are a few others.

[mscdex]

Other semver-major changes I can think of offhand:

1. v8 5.0
2. Faster module loading
3. Timers refactor
4. 50% more cowbell

[mikeal]

1. what of note is in V8 5.0 compared to prior releases?
2. how much faster is module loading?
3. what does the timers refactor actually do?

[jasnell]

1. No API changes, new ES language features, perf improvements
2. https://benchmarking.nodejs.org/charts/require_new.png
3. @Fishrock123

[Fishrock123]

3.. best not to worry about it too much

I'm not actually sure it is that noteworthy. It bring the subsystem architecture back to how it originally was, perhaps increasing some performance in some cases.

Other semver-major changes I can think of offhand:

• Timers refactor

it wasn't even major; it's in v5.

[Fishrock123]

I need to finish my breaking changes doc, but it's pretty close to done. Doesn't overlap with this, but doing new features docs in similar ways may be helpful.

[mscdex]

it wasn't even major; it's in v5.

Ah ok. Nevermind then.

Perhaps we should also put together a more comprehensive summary for users upgrading from v4, since this is a new LTS release, rather than saying "read the v5 changelogs too?"

[jasnell]

@mscdex +1 ... just not in the changelog per se. I plan to go through and compile separate listings of all the semver-major and semver-minor updates that have been made since v4.2. It's going to take a bit of time to do, however. I'm planning to work on it later this week.

[bricss]

When to expect final release?

[mscdex]

@bricss AFAIK we're shooting for the 26th

[jasnell]

Yep, the 26th. RC.3 should hit a bit later on this afternoon. Going to start working on it around 3:30

[jasnell]

Here is the current list of notable changes for v6 in RC.3 ... please take some time to hammer away at this and let me know what's missing, what shouldn't be there, or any other changes I should note. See jasnell@59bc4db for the full commit log showing the semver-major changes since v5.0.0 and the minor/patch changes since v5.10.1.

• Buffer
  • New Buffer constructors have been added
    #4682
  • Previously deprecated Buffer APIs are removed
    #5048,
    #4594
  • Improved error handling #4514
• Cluster
  • Worker emitted as first argument in 'message' event
    #5361.
• Crypto
  • Improved error handling #3100,
    #5611
  • Simplified Certificate class bindings
    #5382
  • Improved control over FIPS mode
    #5181
  • pbkdf2 digest overloading is deprecated
    #4047
• Dependencies
  • Reintroduce shared c-ares build support
    #5775.
  • V8 updated to 5.0.71.31 #6111.
• DNS
  • Add resolvePtr API to query plain DNS PTR records
    #4921.
• Domains
  • Clear stack when no error handler
    #4659.
• File System
  • FS apis can now accept and return paths as Buffers
    #5616.
  • Error handling and type checking improvements
    #5616,
    #5590,
    #4518,
    #3917.
  • fs.read's string interface is deprecated
    #4525
• HTTP
  • 'clientError' can now be used to return custom errors from an
    HTTP server #4557.
• Modules
  • Current directory is now prioritized for local lookups
    #5689
• Net
  • DNS hints no longer implicitly set
    #6021.
  • Improved error handling and type checking
    #5981,
    #5733,
    #2904
• Path
  • Improved type checking #5348.
• Process
  • Introduce process warnings API
    #4782.
  • Throw exception when non-function passed to nextTick
    #3860.
• Readline
  • Emit key info unconditionally
    #6024
• REPL
  • Assignment to _ will emit a warning.
    #5535
• Timers
  • Fail early when callback is not a function
    #4362
• TLS
  • Rename 'clientError' to 'tlsClientError'
    #4557
  • SHA1 used for sessionIdContext
    #3866
• TTY
  • Previously deprecated setRawMode wrapper is removed
    #2528.
• Util
  • Changes to Error object formatting
    #4582.
• Windows
  • Windows XP and Vista are no longer supported
    #5167,
    #5167.

[mscdex]

@jasnell How (if at all) is the newer v8 release that fixes that harmony regexp command-line flag going to work? Is the plan to merge it before the final release or for an rc4 or something else?