In April 2023, Node.js released its latest major version with Node.js 20. This major version release, which has been code-named Iron, recently become a Long Term Support (LTS) release in October 2023.
Recently Red Hat released a fully supported Node 20 container image. Every Red Hat build of Node.js release is tested and supported on supported Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and are based on Universal Base Image.
Red Hat Runtimes are tested and certified against a variety of popular development frameworks and technologies while running on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Since we are unable to test every possible framework and version, Red Hat build of Node.js supported components/modules/framework can be found on component details page as per the Module and Framework Support Policies .
You can use the Openshift Client(oc) to create a new application like so:
oc new-app registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/nodejs-20:latest~https://github.com/nodeshift-starters/nodejs-rest-http
oc expose svc/nodejs-rest-httpAlternatively, you can use the Nodeshift module to deploy a Node.js application from a local directory:
npx nodeshift --dockerImage=registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/nodejs-20 --exposeNode 20 Updates
This release brings a host of improvements and features, like updating the V8 Javascript Engine to version 11.3, which brings some new language features. For example, there are new methods on the String prototype, String.prototype.isWellFormed and String.prototype.toWellFormed. ArrayBuffer and SharedArrayBuffer also received a resizable and growable methods respectively
There are also some feature highlights worth mentioning:
- Stable Test Runner
- WASI (Experimental) no longer a requires command line flag, and version is required
- Permission model (Experimental)
- Single Executable Applications (Experimental)
- Tracing channel (Experimental)
Wrap up
As you can see, using the Node.js 20 container image on Red Hat OpenShift today is pretty simple to use. To learn more about the improvements and features in Node.js 20, check out Red Hat’s Blog about the release
For more information on how Red Hat defines how node.js modules and frameworks are supported in Red Hat build of Node.js available via a subscription to Red Hat Runtimes check out the Node.js Module and Framework Support Policies page
If you want to learn more about what Red Hat is up to on the Node.js front, check out our Node.js page here.
