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Breaking changes between v5 and v6

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Jeremiah Senkpiel edited this page Aug 8, 2016 · 12 revisions

Breaking changes between v5 and v6

When editing this page please be as detailed as possible.

For older breaking changes, please see our v4 to v5 page.

89 commits were tagged semver-major.

Note to readers: # is synonymous with .prototype., and indicates the property is available on instances of that class. Example: Object#toString() is equivalent to Object.prototype.toString().

By Subsystem

buffer

[Docs]

cluster

[Docs]

  • The Worker#suicide property has been deprecated in favor of the more descriptive Worker#exitedAfterDisconnect.
  • The 'message' event from cluster now calls with 3 arguments, with worker being the first argument.
    • Previously the callback signature was (message, handle), now it is (worker, message, handle).
    • Refs: 66f4586dd0, #5361

console

[Docs]

  • Console#timeEnd(label) now internally cleans up after itself.
    • Previously it left the timer label in the _times map.
    • Refs: a5cce79ec3, #3562
  • Console#timeEnd(label) now only emits a warning if the label does not exist.

crypto

[Docs]

  • Error messages from the C++ code are now better formatted.
  • Native OpenSSL Symbols are now exported correctly on Windows.
    • This can cause compile errors for addons that were previously working around the missing symbols.
    • Refs: b4d4fd939c, #6274
  • require('crypto') now throws if node has been built without crypto support.
    • Also happens for require('tls'), and require('https').
    • Refs: f429fe1b88, #5611
  • crypto.Certificate no longer has _handle property.
    • Class methods that previously needed this now call to the c++ binding directly.
    • Refs: a37401e061, #5382
  • The digest parameter for crypto.pbkdf2() is now required.
    • Not using the digest parameter currently prints a deprecation warning
  • The default encoding for all crypto methods is now utf8.
    • Previously, the encoding was binary (node's version of latin1).
    • Refs: b010c87164, #5522
  • FIPS-compliant mode is now off by default even if node is built with FIPS-compliance.
    • Note: Regular node releases are not built with FIPS enabled.
    • Refs: 7c48cb5601, #5181

dgram

[Docs]

  • If there is no error when calling Socket#send(), the callback's error parameter will now once again be null, rather than 0.

dns

[Docs]

  • dns.resolve() now supports resolving plain DNS PTR records.
    • Previously, calling dns.resolve(hostname, 'PTR', cb) would call dns.reverse() on the hostname. That is no longer the case.
    • The hostname must now be passed as a reverse IN-ADDR domain.
    • Refs: dbdbdd4998, #4921

Before:

dns.resolve('8.8.4.4', 'PTR', (err, result) => {
  if (err) {
    // handle error
  }
  // result => ['google-public-dns-b.google.com']
});

After:

dns.resolve('4.4.8.8-in-addr.arpa', 'PTR', (err, result) => {
  if (err) {
    // handle error
  }
  // result => ['google-public-dns-b.google.com']
});

// one could also simply do
dns.reverse('8.8.4.4', (err, result) => {
  if (err) {
    // handle error
  }
  // result => ['google-public-dns-b.google.com']
});
  • dns.lookupService() now coerces the port parameter to a number.
    • Previously, if port was not a number, a TypeError would be thrown.
    • Now, if the port is outside the range of 0-65535, a TypeError will be thrown.
    • Refs: f3be421c1c, #4883

domain

[Docs]

  • Domains no longer assign their context to other error handling code when there is no domain 'error' event handler.
    • Previously, this was only the case if the 'error' event from the domain was handled.
    • Refs: 90204cc468, #4659

events

[Docs]

  • The internal event handler storage object EventEmitter#_events now inherits from Object.create(null) rather than Object.prototype.
    • This prevents issues with events using otherwise reserved property names such as __proto__.
    • This also means that any properties that modules intentionally add to Object.prototype will not be available on _events.
    • Refs: e38bade828, #6092

freelist

  • The deprecated freelist module has been removed.
    • This module was intended to be internal only and we had no intention of maintaining it beyond our own use.
    • Use-cases for this would be better suited using a user-land module.
    • Refs: b70dc67828, #3738

fs

[Docs]

  • fs.readdir{Sync}() now returns filenames in utf8 by default.
    • The encoding of filenames is now configurable via an options object.
    • Example: fs.readdir(path, { encoding: 'hex' }, callback)
    • Refs: 060e5f0c00, #5616
  • Deprecated re-evaluating the fs source code from user code.
  • Deprecated fs.read()'s legacy (fd, length, position, encoding, callback) call signature.
  • fs.read() with a read length of 0 no longer throws.
  • fs.link{Sync}() now does its call parameter checks in the correct order.
  • fs.realpath{Sync}() now uses uv_fs_realpath() under the hood, rather than using a JavaScript implementation.
    • The cache parameter no longer accepts an object cache, and instead has been superseded by an options parameter.
    • Refs: b488b19eaf, #3594

globals

[Docs]

module

[Docs]

  • The current directory is now prioritized for relative lookups.
    • Previously node_module directories would be prioritized if present.
    • For example, require('./example') would previously require node_modules/example if it existed, rather than ./example.js.
    • Refs: d38503ab01, #5689
  • Symlinks are now preserved when using require()
  • Syntax errors in require()'d files now print with more information.

net

[Docs]

  • Valid port checking is now stricter.
  • net.createServer() now throws if a supplied options argument is not an object.
    • It is still possible to only supply a connectionListener callback.
    • Refs: a78b3344f8, #2904
  • The V4MAPPED DNS hint is no longer set by default. However, the ADDRCONFIG is still set.

path

[Docs]

process

[Docs]

  • Accessing process.EventEmitter now prints a deprecation warning.
  • All previously printed node warnings are now more consistent and only emitted via the default handler for a new process 'warning' event.
    • This include deprecations, which are now classified as DeprecationWarnings.
    • Refs: c6656db352, #4782
  • process.nextTick() now throws if the argument is not a function.

querystring

[Docs]

  • The parsed object returned by querystring.parse() now inherits from Object.create(null) rather than Object.prototype.
    • This prevents issues with querystring properties using otherwise reserved property names such as __proto__.
    • This also means that any properties that modules intentionally add to Object.prototype will not be available on the returned object..
    • Refs: dba245f796, #6055
  • querystring.escape() now uses Object#toString() for objects rather than Object#valueOf().
    • This brings it more in-line with the functionality of encodeURIComponent().
    • 5dafb435d8, #5341

readline

[Docs]

  • Readline history can now be disabled by setting the createInterface() option historySize to 0.
    • Previously, setting to 0 would just use the default of 30 lines.
    • Refs: 0303a2552e, #6352
  • Deprecated the following undocumented readline functions, which are only intended for internal use:
    • isFullWidthCodePoint(), stripVTControlCharacters(), getStringWidth(), emitKeys()
    • Refs: ca2e8b292f, #3862
  • Readline#emitKeypressEvents(stream) now always provides the key info parameter in 'keypress' events to the provided stream.

repl

[Docs]

  • It is now possible to assign a variable to _, which usually holds the result of the last expression within the REPL.
    • Doing this will print a warning and disable the behavior of holding the last expression.
    • Refs: ad8257fa5b, 5535
  • Improvements have been made that decrease the number of errors when REPL completion fails.

stream

[Docs]

timers

[Docs]

tls

[Docs]

tty

[Docs]

url

[Docs]

  • url.resolve() now drops auth information if the host changes.
    • This is a security measure to help ensure authentication credentials are not leaked.
    • Refs: eb4201f07a, #1480

util

[Docs]

vm

[Docs]

  • The vm.Script option displayErrors now attaches the line of code that caused the error to the stack trace.

zlib

[Docs]

  • The close event from zlib instances no longer emits on synchronous calls.
  • Gzip trailing garbage after a gzip stream is no longer discarded and now throws an error instead.
    • Note: Null byte padding is not affected, since it has been pointed out at various occasions that such padding is normal and discarded by gzip(1), too.
    • Refs: 54a5287e3e, #5883

Native Modules (Addons)

  • The module ABI has changed due to a minor addition to module initialization.
    • This only means that native addons will need to be recompiled.
    • Refs: 71470a8e45, #4771
  • The NODE_MODULE_VERSION is now 48.
  • Some previously deprecated internal functions have been removed.

General Node

  • Internal tooling no longer ships in node tarballs, reducing their size by about 10%.

--

--

  • Error messages are now more consistent across all modules.
    • All now start with a capital letter, contain no other regular words with capitals, and do not contain ending periods.
    • Additionally, argument names and other code is now always between double quotations (").
    • In some cases, errors are also now more informative.
    • Refs: 20285ad177, #3374, 53a95a5b12, #5616, 8bb60e3c8d, #5590, ec49fc8229, #5981

--

  • Node.js no longer supports Windows Vista or previous versions, and will refuse to run on those versions of windows.
    • Additionally, the installer will not install on those windows versions.
    • The minimum supported versions of windows are now Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
    • Refs: 1cf26c036d, 55db19074d, #5167

--

  • Node.js no longer supports building on OS X versions older than 10.7.

--

  • Installing via Makefile (tools/install.py) no longer attempts to change the target location of node in npm's shebang to the locally built node.
    • Instead, it is kept as #!/usr/bin/env node, which looks for node globally.
    • Refs: 8ffa20c495, #6098

Dependencies

  • Shared c-ares builds are now supported once again.
  • V8 has been upgraded to 5.0.71.32 + floating patches.
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