Port to Node.js 8.0

Created by: M5oul

• Node.js 7.0 was released 25 october 2016

Duniter dependencies which handle Node.js 7.0:

• sqlite3
• Node webkit
• async module received a big upgrade

@c-geek said we will see later as there is issues using this version.

Created by: M5oul

async/await will be/is integrated on Node.js v7 with V8 Chrome's JavaScript motor integration.

According to your article:

When to start using it?

Node.js v8, the next stable version containing the V8 version that enables async/await operations will be released in April 2017.

We better wait for Node.js 8, which is planned for October 2017.

Created by: M5oul

Node.js 8.6 is already included on Fedora 27 Beta. I will try it too see how it goes.

Restricting code to Node 8 would bring several benefits:

Enable ES8/ES2017 features

Native async/await support

This would allow better stack traces, as the polyfill "__awaiter" would be removed and handled directly by NodeJS:

var __awaiter = (this && this.__awaiter) || function (thisArg, _arguments, P, generator) {
    return new (P || (P = Promise))(function (resolve, reject) {
        function fulfilled(value) { try { step(generator.next(value)); } catch (e) { reject(e); } }
        function rejected(value) { try { step(generator["throw"](value)); } catch (e) { reject(e); } }
        function step(result) { result.done ? resolve(result.value) : new P(function (resolve) { resolve(result.value); }).then(fulfilled, rejected); }
        step((generator = generator.apply(thisArg, _arguments || [])).next());
    });
};

This code would completely be removed from transpiled JS, and be handled natively by the NodeJS engine.

Better performances

When executing the tests on my machine:

• NodeJS 6: 118" of time execution (~2 minutes)
• NodeJS 8: 95" of time execution (~1,5 minutes)

Which is 20% faster.

Future improvement for PoW code

A new memory sharing mechanism is present in ES8, very useful for JS multithreading, which we do with the proof-of-work code.

This would allow us to remove all the communication code between workers and the main thread, giving more security (only one memory zone to secure), better speed and easier data sharing, cleaner code.

Yet, this feature is not part of Node8 but Node9 or Node10. So it is a future feature.

changed milestone to %1.6.0

added T-optimization ~174 labels

assigned to @c-geek

I'm already testing the software with NodeJS 8 right now, the Linux Desktop version.

I still need to do it with:

• .deb (Server and Desktop)
• .exe (Windows Desktop)

If it all goes right, I will make a new MR on 1.6 branch.

@moul already created a MR : !1209 (closed)

Yes but the content of this is MR is too low, you can close it.

mentioned in commit 1333c2d0

mentioned in commit 5994e648

mentioned in commit 96e1434a

mentioned in commit bffadce1

removed assignee

mentioned in commit 61e199e3

Reopen because of #1230 (closed)

You be fixed by !1226 (merged).

mentioned in merge request !1228 (merged)

closed