Cross-env is a valuable utility for Node.js developers, simplifying the process of setting environment variables consistently across different operating systems. Versions 3.1.3 and 3.1.4 both share the same core functionality: enabling the execution of commands with environment variables defined in a cross-platform manner. Both versions depend on cross-spawn version ^3.0.1 for handling the execution of child processes, vital for setting environment variables. Similarly, the development dependencies remain identical, including tools that enhance the developer experience, such as linters (eslint, eslint-plugin-mocha, eslint-config-kentcdodds), testing frameworks (mocha, chai, sinon, sinon-chai), code coverage tools (istanbul, codecov.io), and utilities for automating releases and enforcing commit message conventions (semantic-release, commitizen, validate-commit-msg, cz-conventional-changelog).
The key difference between the two versions lies in the release date, with version 3.1.4 released on January 3, 2017, subsequent to version 3.1.3's release on October 15, 2016. This suggests that version 3.1.4 likely incorporates bug fixes, performance improvements, or other minor enhancements that do not affect the core API or dependency structure. For developers, upgrading from 3.1.3 to 3.1.4 is generally recommended to benefit from these improvements, ensuring stability and potentially resolving unforeseen issues. While the changes may not be immediately apparent, staying up-to-date with the latest stable version is good practice for maintaining a robust and reliable development environment.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 3.1.4 of the package
Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) in cross-spawn
Versions of the package cross-spawn before 7.0.5 are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) due to improper input sanitization. An attacker can increase the CPU usage and crash the program by crafting a very large and well crafted string.
