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Deno 1.5 Release Notes

Today we are releasing Deno 1.5.0. This release contains a few new features, many feature stabilizations, and a ton of bug fixes. Here are some highlights:

If you already have Deno installed you can upgrade to 1.5 by running deno upgrade. If you are installing Deno for the first time, you can use one of the methods listed below:

# Using Shell (macOS and Linux):
curl -fsSL https://deno.land/x/install/install.sh | sh

# Using PowerShell (Windows):
iwr https://deno.land/x/install/install.ps1 -useb | iex

# Using Homebrew (macOS):
brew install deno

# Using Scoop (Windows):
scoop install deno

# Using Chocolatey (Windows):
choco install deno

New features and changes

Improved bundling

Since the last release we have been hard at work to refactor our entire TypeScript compiler infrastructure. Because of this we were able to replace our aging bundling infrastructure with a new bundler based on swc.

This has led to a 3x performance improvement when we type-check your code, and up to a 15x improvement if you use the --no-check flag.

In addition to the performance improvements the bundler is now capable of tree shaking your code. This means it will remove code from the bundle that you are not actually using. This leads to a major size reductions in bundles. For example a bundle of the file_server example is 35% smaller in 1.5 when comparing to 1.4.

Bundles are now also emitted as a standard ES module, which means that dynamic import will work correctly now, and import.meta.url is also set correctly. If you were using Deno to bundle code for the browser, make sure to load the bundle as an ES module now (type="module" attribute on your <script> tag).

alert, confirm, and prompt added

This release adds the web platform APIs alert, confirm, and prompt. These have the same functions as they do in the browser:

  • alert logs a message to the terminal, and then synchronously blocks until you confirm (with [Enter]).
  • confirm prompts the user with a message, and then synchronously blocks until the user responds with either y or n (to signal yes or no).
  • prompt requests some input from the user, and blocks synchronously until the user has entered the text and pressed [Enter].

Here is a little demo of these functions in action. You can try it out by running deno run https://deno.com/v1.5/alert_confirm_prompt.js.

let name = "";

while (true) {
  name = prompt("What is your name?");

  if (confirm(`Are you sure ${name} is your name?`)) {
    break;
  }
}

alert(`Hello ${name}!`);

Improvements to the REPL

The REPL has had a major refactor enabling several new features. Here are some of the highlights:

  • Tab completion of object properties and methods: to use this, just press Tab to cycle through the list of properties and methods.
  • Code syntax highlighting: code that you enter is now syntax highlighted if your terminal supports colors. You can disable this with the NO_COLOR environment variable.
  • Top level await support: you can now just await promises in the REPL without having to wrap your call in an async IIFE.

Stricter type checks in stable

This release enables the isolatedModules TypeScript compiler option for all users by default. In the 1.4 release this flag was enabled for users using --unstable. This option enables some stricter checks in the TypeScript compiler that will likely lead to some new errors you have not seen before:

ERROR TS1205: Re-exporting a type when the '--isolatedModules' flag is provided requires using 'export type'.

These errors occur when interfaces or type aliases are re-exported. To fix the error, change your re-exports to use export type. Example:

// Bad
export { MyType } from "./mod.ts";

// Good
export type { MyType } from "./mod.ts";

For now you can override this option in a tsconfig.json.

Deno API additions and stabilizations

We have stabilized Deno.fsync(), Deno.fdatasync(), and their synchronous counterparts. These low-level methods are for ensuring modified file data is written to the disk drive.

There are also two new unstable APIs introduced to --unstable:

  • Deno.sleepSync() - This function can be used to synchronously sleep. This will block the event loop, blocking all async operations, and JavaScript execution. In most cases you will want to use setTimeout to sleep as this does not block the event loop.
  • Deno.systemCpuInfo() - This function can be used to get information about number of cores available in the machine as well as the speed of the CPU.

deno lint updates

deno lint has gotten some new rules this release. The main one is camelcase: it checks that all of your variable declarations use camelCase formatting. We are hoping to stabilize deno lint for Deno 1.6.

In addition to the new rules, we have introduced hints for lint diagnostics. These hints will suggest how the lint errors can be fixed.

Finally deno lint has a website now that you can use to view documentation and explanations for the rules. You can find it at https://lint.deno.land.

deno fmt --ignore now stable

The deno fmt --ignore flag is now available without the --unstable flag. This flag can be used to ignore some files or folders from being formatted or checked by the formatter.

Changes to std

The assertStringContains and assertArrayContains methods in std/testing/asserts.ts have been renamed to assertStringIncludes and assertArrayIncludes respectively, to match the the naming of the includes method on strings and arrays. To update your code, simply rename the imported methods:

- import { assertStringContains, assertArrayContains } from "https://deno.land/[email protected]/testing/asserts.ts";
-
- assertStringContains("denosaur", "deno")
- assertArrayContains(["deno", "new", "release"], "new")
+ import { assertStringIncludes, assertArrayIncludes } from "https://deno.land/[email protected]/testing/asserts.ts";
+
+ assertStringIncludes("denosaur", "deno")
+ assertArrayIncludes(["deno", "new", "release"], "new")

In addition to this renaming, a assertExists and assertObjectMatch assertion have been added to std/testing/asserts.ts:

  • assertExists asserts that the passed value is not null or undefined.
    assertExists("foo"); // passes
assertExists(""); // passes
assertExists(0); // passes
assertExists(null); // throws
assertExists(undefined); // throws
  • assertObjectMatch asserts that the expected value is a subset of the actual value.
    assertObjectMatch({ a: "b", c: "d" }, { a: "b", c: "d" }); // passes
assertObjectMatch({ a: "b", c: "d" }, { a: "b" }); // passes
assertObjectMatch({ a: "b", c: "d" }, { a: "b", c: "f" }); // throws
assertObjectMatch({ a: "b" }, { a: "b", c: "d" }); // throws

The full release notes, including bug fixes, can be found at https://github.com/denoland/deno/releases/tag/v1.5.0.

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