
V8 Release 5.0 (upcoming) - onestone
http://v8project.blogspot.com/2016/03/v8-release-50.html
======
ausjke
How does nodejs sync with V8 releases? ECMA-version, V8-version, Node-version,
Javascript-version, browser-version with different features support, it's
quite a bit.

~~~
onestone
Node.js Stable tries to follow the V8 version from latest stable Chrome quite
closely (i.e. soon after the corresponding Chrome release), but occasionally a
V8 version may be skipped, e.g. if it has problematic API changes.

Node.js LTS branches stay on a fixed V8 version.

~~~
jerrysievert
we just managed to get plv8 tracking against the same v8 versions as node
(4.4-4.10).

v8 moves very quickly, and even the redhat/debian package maintainers are
still distributing 3.14.

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STRML
This is a nice release.

I've always been confused about V8 versioning. Breaking changes appear to come
all the time in minor versions.

And there's this note from the release:

> Note: The version number 5.0 does not carry semantic significance or mark a
> major release (as opposed to a minor release).

So what does it mark? Why 5.0 at all then?

~~~
apaprocki
They changed their versioning process to align with Chrome. Chrome 50 == v8
5.0, Chrome 51 == v8 5.1, etc.

~~~
natorion
Correct.

Major versions make more sense when you create a release based on the content.
V8 is creating its releases based on time (~6 week cadence). So a 'major'
version is nothing special anymore. In 4.9 we greatly expanded our ES2015
support which was huge but only incremented the minor version because of the
same reason.

Disclaimer: I work on the V8 team.

~~~
STRML
Why not date-based version numbers, then, or as bryanlarsen stated, something
obviously meaningless, like the Chrome/FF numbers?

Edit: By the way, sorry to derail the conversation. You guys are doing great
work! I'm always excited about V8 updates because they generally mean great
perf/feature improvements to both the most popular browsers and my runtime of
choice, NodeJS.

~~~
natorion
The reason is simply 'legacy'. Maybe we will change our version numbers to
something without major.minor versions.

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madeofpalk
Optimisations for ES6 features is great!

Any idea how V8 releases relate to Node (especially now post-io.js)? When
could we see these improvements on the server?

~~~
ilkkao
Node.js is easy to compile from sources. Basically when
[https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/5592](https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/5592)
gets merged, all that is needed is

git clone git@github.com:nodejs/node.git; cd node ; git checkout vee-
eight-5.0; ./configure; make; make install

to start experimenting.

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NodeJSDude
Anyone know the V8 version that they are targeting for node.js 6?

There are some sweet features in ES6 V8 4.9 that I would love to start using
including optional arguments and array based destructuring.

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kozak
Any idea when ES6 modules (via the <module> HTML tag) are coming?

~~~
s3th
We just sent out an intent to ship this week! [0] They're trickier to
implement than other ES6 features since they require coordination with the
Blink side of Chromium.

[0]:
[https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-
dev/uba6pMr-jec)

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Already__Taken
I've heard there's some V8 changes coming down the pipeline that will end up
allowing node to use the serialport package without compiling anything native.

Have I heard wrong?

~~~
s3th
Something related to debugging? Perhaps you came across this thread?
[https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/2546#issuecomment-1893...](https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/2546#issuecomment-189311746)

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jackhack
Surely I'm not the only one asking "what is this/should I care?"

(three clicks later...) V8 is a javascript engine that supports web assembly.

~~~
tajen
V8 is _the_ js engine. The one that is so fast because it compiles in JIT, the
one that powers Chrome and Node.js, the one that enabled a full range of
let's-build-a-full-app-in-a-browser apps.

Also for the worse: the one that lets us include 10Mb of js in a browser.

~~~
coldtea
> _The one that is so fast because it compiles in JIT_

That's true for all modern JS engines (JavaScriptCore, Edge, SpiderMonkey, v8)
and has been for several years (almost a decade).

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Cthulhu_
But only after V8; before that, JS performance had no priority in browsers.

~~~
azakai
That's a common mistake, but JITs in WebKit and Gecko came out at around the
same time as v8. Their development began before v8 launched.

edit: For example, see the dates on Wikipedia, v8 launched September 2008, and
WebKit's Nitro (SFX) JIT launched in the same month.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#JavaScriptCore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#JavaScriptCore)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V8_(JavaScript_engine)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V8_\(JavaScript_engine\))

