Browserify version 1.4.2 is a minor release following closely on the heels of version 1.4.1, both serving as crucial tools for developers aiming to use Node.js-style modules within a browser environment. Both iterations provide a browser-side require() function, enabling the organization of JavaScript code into directories and the utilization of npm modules directly in web applications. Key dependencies like nub, resolve, optimist, commondir, detective, and coffee-script remain consistent, ensuring core functionality related to module resolution, dependency management, and command-line argument parsing stays stable. Significant development dependencies such as seq, jade, dnode, jsdom, connect, hashish, backbone, expresso, traverse, and jquery-browserify are also mirrored, indicating an emphasis on maintaining testing and development workflows from one version to the next.
The primary distinction between the two lies in their release dates, with version 1.4.2 being published just over an hour after 1.4.1. This suggests that version 1.4.2 likely addresses a minor bug fix, patch, or immediate issue discovered shortly after the release of 1.4.1. For developers using Browserify, upgrading to 1.4.2 is recommended to benefit from any potential stability improvements or resolutions to unforeseen problems present in the earlier release. Given the rapid succession of versions, the changes are probably not feature-rich, but getting the last version allows us to get safer code. Because of the focus on stability and fixing errors, both 1.4.1 and 1.4.2 share the same features and can be used to load safely Node.js modules in the browser.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 1.4.2 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.