Browserify is a powerful tool that lets you use require() in your browser-side JavaScript, enabling you to organize your code into modules just like Node.js. Versions 1.8.2 and 1.8.3 offer the same core functionalities: browser-side module bundling for npm packages and JavaScript directories. If you're already on 1.8.2, the upgrade to 1.8.3 is likely focused on under-the-hood refinements and potential bug fixes as the dependencies and devDependencies are consistent on both versions.
Both versions share the same dependencies like nub, deputy, resolve, optimist, commondir, detective, and coffee-script, ensuring similar core functionality. Also, the devDependencies remain identical. This means that testing, templating (with Jade), remote procedure calls (dnode), DOM manipulation (jsdom), server operations (connect), and data manipulation (hashish, backbone and traverse) are consistent across the two versions.
The key difference appears in the release date. Version 1.8.3 was released on January 4th, 2012, while 1.8.2 was released on December 31st, 2011. The few days gap suggests 1.8.3 is a patch release addressing potential bugs or minor improvements found in the previous version.
Thus, developers using 1.8.2 should consider upgrading to 1.8.3 to benefit from the latest stability improvements and any potential bug fixes. For new users, starting with 1.8.3 is recommended to ensure utilizing the most current stable version. By leveraging Browserify, developers can write modular, maintainable, and testable browser-based JavaScript applications following Node.js conventions.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 1.8.3 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.