Version Details and Security Vulnerabilities

Babel-runtime version 5.6.20 represents a subtle but potentially important update to the babel selfContained runtime library, compared to its predecessor, version 5.6.19. Both versions, critical for projects leveraging Babel to transpile modern JavaScript code for broader browser compatibility, share core characteristics. They are described as "babel selfContained runtime", indicate a contained set of polyfills and helpers that Babel injects into the compiled code to ensure features like async/await and newer ES6+ functionalities function correctly across different environments. Crucially, they also share the same dependency on core-js version ^0.9.0, the polyfill library ensuring compatibility for Javascript code. They both are under the MIT license, and both libraries are under the same repository.

The primary difference lies in their release dates. Version 5.6.20 was published on July 13, 2015, at 19:56:21 UTC, a few hours after version 5.6.19, which was released on the same day at 15:46:16 UTC. While the changelogs aren't provided here, the very short timeframe between releases suggests that version 5.6.20 likely addresses a minor fix or hotfix for a bug present in 5.6.19. This kind of patch is really important when developers are struggling with code transpilation because these packages could potentially allow faster development when fixing them. For developers already on 5.6.19, upgrading to 5.6.20 is strongly recommended to benefit from the bug fix and ensure a more stable and reliable runtime environment. Failing to update might lead to unexpected behavior in browsers or environments that don't fully support modern JavaScript features. For new users, directly adopting 5.6.20 is beneficial as it is expected to be the better updated version.