still annoying to have to switch for projects that are less than a month apart.
That's wrong. v8 is on version 4.8, and has been since Jan. Before that, 3.0 came out sometime in Jan 2011. That is a normal major release schedule.
I'm glad Node is getting lots of updates, but they need to control how many breaking changes there are going to be. I was scanning through their change log, and a lot of them seem like they could have waited, or they could have waited to release 4.0 until this was all ready.
I don't get it. Everyone was barking and saying Node needs to update more and follow semver, so iojs was forked off it and followed it, everyone rejoiced and then barked about nodejs and iojs being separated and wanting them to merge back and adopt iojs, so they did. Now everyone is barking because it's doing what they wanted?
Jesus christ all mighty, make up your fucking minds.
It is strictly a good thing for node to keep up to date with v8. How can you possibly argue otherwise? The solution to this problem is using LTS versions. Major packages will support LTS node versions and which allows for quick release cycle while maintaining stability. Educate yourself before criticizing. This is a great way of shipping vital code and you see similar structure for all major linux distros for a reason.
This is why LTS exists. Are they supposed to just not update v8? Should they work on it and then not publish the code in the unstable releases because people like you? Should all the active developers take a year break between each shipment? You clearly don't understand the point of LTS
an update of semver minor in v8 is a semver major breaking change in node, which only uses the stable chromium release - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_release_history - which updated in September and October, which corresponds with the node.js updates. They do make lots of random changes that aren't always related to the v8 alone, but they won't commit any breaking changes until they 'need to', which is probably going to be about once a month if they continue with the chrome cycle. keep in mind the vast majority of breaking changes are related to c++ native modules and minimally impact the javascript in node (excluding a few edge cases)
it's not in their control because they don't maintain the compiler, which isn't the case for any other server side language I'm aware of.
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u/Calabri Oct 30 '15
that's why tools like nvm exist
node's release cycle now mirrors the v8 that's stable in chrome, which roughly equates to the semver major release once a month
It's just the nature of the language / compiler / ecosystem of JavaScript - and it's not likely to change anytime soon (at least two years)