Version Details and Security Vulnerabilities

Babel CLI version 7.18.10 introduces subtle yet impactful changes compared to its predecessor, 7.18.9. Both versions serve as the command-line interface for Babel, enabling developers to transpile modern JavaScript code into versions compatible with older environments. Key features like globbing for file selection, platform-agnostic path manipulation with slash, directory creation with make-dir, command-line argument parsing via commander, source map conversion, and recursive directory reading remain consistent. Also the core peer dependency on @babel/core remains unchanged, ensuring compatibility with existing Babel configurations.

A notable difference lies in the development dependencies. Version 7.18.10 upgrades @babel/core to version 7.18.10, aligning the CLI with the core compiler for potentially better synergy and bug fixes. It also adds @types/glob and @types/fs-readdir-recursive as dev dependencies, suggesting a move toward improved type safety and developer experience during development, possibly by using Typescript. The subtle increase in unpacked size from 37054 to 37176 bytes in the newer version might hint at these internal improvements.

For developers, staying updated ensures access to the latest bug fixes and performance enhancements within the Babel ecosystem. Check the official changelog for exhaustive details about specific resolved issues. While the core functionality is preserved, the inclusion of new typing dependencies may streamline the development workflow for contributors and maintainers, and using the latest compatible @babel/core could give a better overall experience. The update from glob ^7.0.0 to ^7.2.0 bring the regular expression vulnerabilities patch and increases the speed of the whole command in some very specific cases involving a lot of recursive directory reads.