A full version history of the next package with size, number of distributed files and dependency evolution.
The next npm package has evolved significantly since its initial release. The early versions, starting with 0.1.0 in 2011, were focused on "Node.js extensions," with minimal dependencies like es5-ext. These versions maintained the same description of Node.js extensions up through 0.2.1.
Over the course of 2011 and 2012. the project expanded, introducing deferred as a dependency in 0.2.0 and minimatch in 0.2.12. Testing tools such as tad were integrated as devDependencies for the first time in version 0.2.1. Later versions of 0.2.x adopted event-emitter as a dependency. Version 0.3.0 saw a description change indicating it was deprecated Node.js extensions. Some newer utilities from the JavaScript ecosystem got incorporated as dependencies including some newer versions of previously used dependencies. The author of the project remained consistently Mariusz Nowak with his contact information.
A major shift occurred with version 0.9.9 in 2016, where the focus appeared to move away from basic utilities to more comprehensive functionalities such as mz, del, url, send, react, glamor, and webpack showcasing the beginning of the modern Next.js framework. These versions began to resemble what we now know as Next.js, with additions supporting React and webpack. It also featured an upgrade to MIT liceensing.
Continuing with the times the newer versions from 1.0.0 up through the most recent listed version 15.4.4 began to use a new repository and had a description showcasing the more clear purpose of being a framework to display server rendered react applications. They started to utilize gulp for dev tooling along with various babel plugins as well showcasing the transition to newer JavaScript features and best practices for developing applications. React and related libraries such as react-dom became dependencies instead of peer dependencies and in later versions the Next team at Vercel began to provide prebuilt Swc binaries instead of relying on every installation having to compile the project locally. These recent versions indicate ongoing development and maintenance with upgrades and improvements to their tooling such as Next.js.