Software Update: Node.js 6.3.0

Node.js is open source and platform independent, and is focused on developing server-side web applications. Those applications are written in javascript and run within the Node.js runtime on the server. It offers an event driven environment, in which non-blocking I/O has been an important starting point. For more information, please refer to this page. The development team has released version 6.3.0 with the following notes:

Version 6.3.0 (Current)

Notable changes

• buffer: Added buffer.swap64() to complement swap16() & swap32(). (Zach Bjornson)
• build: New configure options have been added for building Node.js as a shared library. (Stefan Budeanu)
  • The options are: –shared, –without-v8-platform & –without-bundled-v8.
• crypto: Root certificates have been updated. (Ben Noordhuis)
• debugger: The server address is now configurable via –debug=:. (Ben Noordhuis)
• npm: Upgraded npm to v3.10.3 (Kat Marchán) & (Rebecca Turner)
• readline: Added the prompt option to the readline constructor. (Evan Lucas)
• repl / vm: sigint/ctrl+c will now break out of infinite loops without stopping the Node.js instance. (Anna Henningsen)
• src: Added a node::FreeEnvironment public C++ API. (Cheng Zhao)
• Refactored require(‘constants’), constants are now available directly from their respective modules. (James M Snell)
• stream: Improved readable.read() performance by up to 70%. (Brian White)
• timers: setImmediate() is now up to 150% faster in some situations. (Andras)
• util: Added a breakLength option to util.inspect() to control how objects are formatted across lines. (chihrig)
• v8-inspector: Experimental support has been added for debugging Node.js over the inspector protocol. (Ali Ijaz Sheikh) Note: This feature is experimental, and it could be altered or removed. You can try this feature by running Node.js with the –inspect flag.