Public API to get changelog and releases

[vmarchaud]

Hello everyone, first i'm not sure this is the right group for this issue, if not i'm will be happy to re-open it in the repo of the appropriate group :)

We (at @keymetrics) want our users to know when there are update (either minor or major) to nodejs that our customers can make in order to have better performance or new features.
We found this static file that contains all releases, we decided to use it to compute which version our customers can upgrade to, but we think an public API can benefit to the whole ecosystem, maybe for other vendor to notify their clients !

We also wanted to explain the changes for each update that we advise to do but we only found the changelogs in the main repository in markdown. We think it can be parsed from there and also exposed in a public API for everyone.

What do you guys think about this ?
Regards

[hutson]

@vmarchaud you may be interested in #290. A similar need has been documented in that issue, where a service would like to programmatically know when new releases of Node are made so that downstream consumers of the service can be notified.

[mhdawson]

@vmarchaud I'm wondering if a first step is a an npm module which parses the existing data to provide the API you are suggesting. That would provide a concrete idea of what the API would provide. Once its available we could assess its popularity and consider bringing it under the foundation repo if there is enough usage to justify it. @nodejs/release what do you thinks ?

[gibfahn]

@nodejs/release what do you thinks ?

Sounds like the right way to go.

[vmarchaud]

Okay so we will start working on a proof of concept soon and get back to you when we think it's suitable for general use :)

[mhdawson]

@vmarchaud sounds good :)

[MylesBorins]

Any updates?

[wallet77]

I'm working on it ;)

[elektronik2k5]

@wallet77 any updates? I'd like use the aforementioned API in order to automatically generate https://www.npmjs.com/package/node packages via @aredridel's https://github.com/aredridel/node-bin-gen project.
I see that nvs is parsing the node github releases page for this purpose. Is that a viable alternative to a dedicated, proper API? Seems hackish to me, especially if node will stop releasing on GitHub some day (for whatever reason).

[wallet77]

Hi @elektronik2k5

"Great minds think alike".
I was thinking about that.
I have created a repo for a public API here : https://github.com/wallet77/nodejs_version_api
But as you can see in the code I'm also parsing a github page to retrieve version list and also changelog.

I'm not sure if there is a better solution. We can manage a local database but it means we should update it each time a new version is released. so we should be very reactive.

With this solution system is really up to date in real time, without changing the code.

But I agree main drawback is :

• if github is down
• if node is not release the same way as before

=> then API will fail.

I'm open to any ideas, you can share it on the repo ;)

Important remark : I will create another repo to create a node module, then basic methods can be used directly into an application (without requesting a public API).
And ofc the public API will also use this module.

[aredridel]

For those who find this later, https://nodejs.org/dist/index.json has info.

[wallet77]

@aredridel Yes this is one of the page I parse to get information.

[wallet77]

Hi there,

Here is the first version of nodejs-versions, which retrieve information about version and changelog :
github : https://github.com/wallet77/nodejs-versions
npm : https://www.npmjs.com/package/nodejs-versions

Any help/advice is welcome.

@mhdawson it seems to fit your description

[nw]

I wrote a tool as well.. https://github.com/nw/node-release-lines

I extended the scope and included vulnerability info from nodejs/security-wg.

The api is fairly powerful for research. For example the number of commits by area touched from the recent release v10.11.0

{ assert: 2,
  build: 10,
  win: 5,
  crypto: 4,
  deps: 5,
  doc: 24,
  errors: 2,
  fs: 2,
  http2: 1,
  lib: 4,
  'n-api': 1,
  net: 1,
  path: 1,
  process: 1,
  src: 9,
  string_decoder: 1,
  test: 20,
  tools: 16,
  trace_events: 1,
  tracing: 1,
  util: 1,
  worker: 1 }

[mhdawson]

Sorry its been a while, will try to look at the tools written.

[iamstarkov]

take a look at this https://github.com/chicoxyzzy/node-releases/

[jasonkarns]

nodenv uses the index.json file from nodejs.org/dist/* to generate the build definition files for node-build: https://github.com/nodenv/node-build-update-defs

[knksmith57]

also might be worth noting that, for release / version resolution, the zeit team and I updated http://resolve-node.now.sh (zeit/resolve-node) a while back in response to the lack of properly maintained, publicly available solutions.

The API is a JSON proxy in front of /dist/index.json that provides semver + codename resolution. no caching, so as soon as nodejs.org is updated, so is it.

$ curl -L resolve-node.now.sh/lts
v10.14.1

$ curl -L resolve-node.now.sh/lts/carbon
v8.14.0

$ curl -L resolve-node.now.sh/11.x
v11.4.0

[jasonkarns]

It's also worth noting that getting latest for any major release (or codename) is also supported directly by the nodejs.org dist/ listings: (for simple use cases)

https://nodejs.org/dist/latest/
https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-carbon/
https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v11.x/

[BridgeAR]

There was no activity for a very long time and there are multiple modules out there that seem to solve the original request.

I am therefore closing this.