Node.js v20.8.0 has arrived, offering performance improvements for streams in the popular JavaScript runtime environment.
Published as the “current” version of Node.js on September 29 and offering the platform’s latest features, Version 20.8.0 can be downloaded from nodejs.org. Stream performance improvements were made to writeable and readable streams, improving creation and destruction by roughly 15% and reducing memory overhead of each stream. Other highlights include performance improvements for readable webstream, boosting readable stream async iterator consumption by about 140%, and improving readable stream pipeto consumption by approximately 60%.
A rework of memory management in vm APIs, meanwhile, has been done with the importModuleDynamically option. This rework addressed longstanding memory leaks and use-after-free issues in APIs supported by this option, such as vm.Script, vmCompileFunction, and vmSyntheticModule. This should enable affected users to upgrade from older Node.js versions.
Node.js 20.8.0 also features a series of changes impacting doc, stream, and module capabilities. Although Version 20.8.0 is the “current” release, giving library authors time to add support, Node.js 18.18.0 is cited as the long-term support (LTS) release of the asynchronous, event-driven JavaScript runtime at the moment, recommended for most users and published September 18. It, too, can be downloaded from nodejs.org.