🕸️ Node.js 20 Released: Experimental Perms, new V8, and Single Executable Apps

An hour ago, the release of Node.js was announced. Let’s see what’s new in this release.

But let’s get back to the new Javascript based server.

Experimental Permission Mode

By adding the:

--experimental-permission

Flag you can switch to the new permission model. While permissions are not bulletproof, it will disable access to file system, spawning processes and creating worker threads. These permissions can be enable with a good granularity. You can read about the system here.

New Javascript With V8 11.3

The update of the JavaScript runtime comes with some new Javascript features. The new method isWellFormed and toWellFormed will help to make sure that user string input is correct UTF-16 string causing less errors especially in the Emoji era.

Other changes in V8 11.3 include:

• Methods that change Array and TypedArray by copy
• Resizable ArrayBuffer and growable SharedArrayBuffer
• RegExp v flag with set notation + properties of strings
• WebAssembly Tail Call (forgot about JS? 🤬)