Major features necessary for 1.0

[ry]

Release estimate as of Oct 24, 2019: End of year

We've got a lot of issues, some are tiny, others are big features. I want to outline what I perceive to be the major missing bits before we can consider 1.0

• "deno --debug" #1120 We need to be able to debug using Chrome Devtools. As the deno userland code base grows, it becomes in increasingly painful to work without a debugger. The way this will work is with a websocket server in Rust (port 9229) which forwards messages to V8 (using V8InspectorClient).

• Loading and execution of modules (either JS or TS) needs to be correct. This is the main thing we deliver actually, but there are still many bugs: source maps are sometimes incorrect #2390, double downloads happen #2442, the cache needs to be refactored #2057.

• Import maps. It's a very reasonable standard and we can provide support via a command line flag. This allows bare imports. The feature will land very soon #2360.

• Dynamic import. 50% complete at the time of writing. #1789

• "deno test" test runner denoland/deno_std#193

• "deno fmt" is slow on the first run. It download a couple of large prettier bundles. #2490

• We need to support d.ts files #1432

• "deno bundle" outputs a single AMD bundle of your program. This is useful to share code with websites. Early work has started: #2467

• "deno compile" is a very interesting feature to output an executable. It would be nice to have, but I would let this slip past 1.0. #986

• "deno install" is a program that creates little shell script aliases to deno programs in your $PATH. This let's people distribute their code easily. denoland/deno_std#471

• dlopen / plugins / extension modules. We need some way of calling into Rust land. The way Parcel does it is pretty awesome https://parceljs.org/rust.html - but we need low-level primitives to build that on, as we need to carefully funnel everything through the Op abstraction. @afinch7 has a working patch for loading ops in DLLs #2385, we are still iterating on the exact API. I would allow a true FFI module to slip past 1.0 - we'll get there - but it needs to be built on ops. #3372

• Support TLS #3009

• The web-server should be faster.

• When you visit a deno.land script url (example https://deno.land/std/http/server.ts) in a web browser, it should do better than redirect. It should look at the Accept header and serve pretty HTML. Solved in denoland/registry@b78e6ae

• If you use "docs.deno.land" you will get auto-generated docs. #3094 denoland/deno_website2#49

• typescript dependencies are not loaded in parallel #2626 #2994

• signal handlers #2339

- [ ] fs events #1826

• TS and source maps are correctly recompiled #2945

• Remove tokio_util::block_on #2960

• "deno test" is slow (when running on std) #2789

• deno lock file #200

Do any major API renames.

• #2384
• #2474
• #2635
• #2767 use web standard Permission API
• #2730 register_op
• denoland/deno_std#562 test(name, fn)
• #2123 Deno.args
• #2934 referencing d.ts files
• #2553 import.meta doesn't work with bundling on browsers. We need to come up with a different scheme for branching if the script is the main.

Other minor bugs that are nevertheless blockers:

• async iteration on fetch bodies #2520
• denoland/deno_std#442
• support onload #2386
• support proxy for module downloads #588 #2873
• panic on too many open files #2243
• we need a way to use typescript compiler from userland denoland/deno_std#428 #2927
• 'url' variable can't be used #2888
• #3367

[95th]

"deno fmt" is slow on the first run. It download a couple of large prettier bundles.

deno fmt right now combines "installation" by loading prettier bundles + formatting.

We can follow Rust's example for this. Rust's cargo fmt is optional but you can download it using rustup component add rustfmt.

We can do something like deno install fmt (using denoland/deno_std#471) which would download the prettier bundles and compile them into cache. Only after this, user should be able to call deno fmt.

Also, is there any existing issue for this?

[ry]

@95th let's move the discussion for fmt to #2490

The other option is to include prettier in the compiler snapshot - which would make it run very fast.

[afinch7]

We also need to address this at some point before 1.0

deno/cli/ops.rs

Line 196 in 76329cf

msg::Any::FetchModuleMetaData => Some(op_fetch_module_meta_data),

[bartlomieju]

@afinch7 could you explain what's to address with op_fetch_module_meta_data? (preferably in separate issue)

[acconrad]

@ry I'll take this:

When you visit a deno.land script url

Where would the CSS live for that? Where is the website server code within deno?

[afinch7]

@bartlomieju see #1858

[mtharrison]

@acconrad I have a WIP PR open for that denoland/registry#95

[geglock]

Support for "http proxy" (for downloading modules) should also be considered for 1.0. See #588. Otherwise deno is hardly usable in enterprise environments.

[ry]

@geglock Thanks - I will add it to the list.

[nayeemrmn]

Not exactly a feature but issues like #2069 should be closed in one sense or another before 1.0, right? Maybe those could be listed?

[teleclimber]

I presume that supporting other networks such as unix is necessary for 1.0? I haven't seen anything specific about that.

deno/js/net.ts line 8:

export type Transport = "tcp";
// TODO support other types:
// export type Transport = "tcp" | "tcp4" | "tcp6" | "unix" | "unixpacket";

Thanks!

[SerkanSipahi]

@ry

1.) I would like to suggest that if we introduce the --debug mode we also add a hot-reload flag so that the browser will reload when the file has changed.

deno some-file.ts --debug --hot-reload

What do you think?

2.) Do you have any release date for 1.0?

[hayd]

@SerkanSipahi 1.) would be quite a small wrapper around #1826, there's already a couple of issues for it.

[kitsonk]

We have been hesitant for a watch mode. It is more than just a wrapper on FS events, as we need to determine what part of the compilation needs to be invalidated and reloaded. It certainly isn't a 1.0 feature IMO.

[hayd]

we need to determine what part of the compilation needs to be invalidated and reloaded

I don't follow, one could kill completely and restart. Anyway, agree it's not needed for 1.0.

[kitsonk]

I don't follow, one could kill completely and restart. Anyway, agree it's not needed for 1.0.

One could, but that wouldn't be as effective/performant as what we would want to build into Deno, which would invalidate the cache for any changed modules, and potentially only reinsert into the isolate the changed recompiled modules, preserving any running state. That would be hot reloading. Restarting would lose any in memory state of "all" the code, not the code that changed.

[ry]

I'm removing fs-events as a blocker for 1.0. It's certainly important but a must-have.

[andyfleming]

I think #986 should make it into 1.0. It would be pretty useful and is a great differentiator. It also sounds we're not too far off from it.

[andyfleming]

#3155 (a minimum typescript and deno version requirement) should also be considered for 1.0.

[andyfleming]

We also should have some developer experience awareness with 1.0.

One specific aspect of that is editors/IDEs. Specifically we should ensure there's not an issues with working on deno projects in common IDEs.

[kitsonk]

#986 would really be a lot to deliver for 1.0... I don't personally think it is critical path. Deno 1.0 is about building a differentiator to drive adoption, it is about having a stable-ish API and a good set of well rounded features, IMO.

[andyfleming]

Fair enough @kitsonk. Also since deno is a single binary and easy to install, it diminishes the importance of #986.

[izelnakri]

@ry currently in node.js v12+ there is experimental worker_threads module that allows users to create a JS thread pool for CPU intensive tasks that can occur in runtime(linting, code-analysis&transpiling, hashing, compressing, encrypting etc). I couldn't find anything similar in plans or in the documentation. Can we add it to this list?

This is a separate request than native plugins.

[bartlomieju]

@ry currently in node.js v12+ there is experimental worker_threads module that allows users to create a JS thread pool for CPU intensive tasks that can occur in runtime(linting, code-analysis&transpiling, hashing, compressing, encrypting etc). I couldn't find anything similar in plans or in the documentation. Can we add it to this list?

This is a separate request than native plugins.

@izelnakri Deno supports web standard Worker API

[ry]

@izelnakri deno already has web workers

[CGQAQ]

@izelnakri Deno is mostly web compatible, any feature that web support, deno most likely would already supported, that's the point of choose Deno over Node.
So if you have any feature wanted but seems don't have deno documents , just try the web way and read the MDN documents side, you will be surprised how many web features deno supported

[kevinkassimo]

We might want to document Workers at least in the manual

[kitsonk]

@ry I would move denoland/deno_std#428 to #2927 and we can "tick" #2888 in the list.