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Really love the ideas behind Deno, and tried to do things the Deno way (Deno.json, JSR, modern imports, Deno Deploy) for a monorepo project with Next.js, Hono and private packages. Some things like Hono worked super well, but Next.js did not. Other things like types would sometimes break in subtle ways. The choice of deployment destination e.g. Vercel for Next also gave me issues.
Here is an example of a small microcut I faced (which might be fixed now) https://github.com/honojs/hono/issues/1216
In contrast, Bun had less cognitive overhead and just "worked" even though it didn't feel as clean as Deno. Some things aren't perfect with Bun either like the lack of a Bun runtime on Vercel
You picked a stack that is still very npm-centric, especially private npm packages. The sweet spot for doing things the Deno way still seems to be choosing stacks that themselves are very Deno and/or ESM-native. I've had some great experiences with Lume, for instance, and targeting things like Deno Deploy over Vercel. (JSR scores are very helpful at finding interesting libraries with great ESM support.) Obviously "start with a fresh stack" is a huge ask and not a great way to sell Deno, given how much time/effort investment exists in stacks like Next.js. But I think in terms of "What does Deno do best?" there's a sweet spot where you 0-60 everything in Deno-native/ESM-native tools.
Also, yeah, a lot of Deno's npm compatibility keeps getting better, as mentioned in these 2.4 release notes there are a few new improvements. As another comment in these threads points out, for a full stack like the one you were trying, using Deno package.json first can give a better compatibility feeling than deno.json first, even if the deno.json first approach is the nicer/cleaner one long term or when you can go 0-60 in Deno-native/ESM-native greenfields.
Lume is a wonderful development experience for creating some static sites, you can get up and running nice and quick and you have a lot of freedom over choices such as the templating language and data formats you want to use.
It works surprisingly well when used in npm compatiblity mode, a lot like Bun is used.
Running `deno install` in a directory with package.json will create a leaner version of node_modules, running `deno task something` will run scripts defined in `package.json`.
Deno way of doing things is a bit problematic, as I too find it is often a timesink where things don't work, then if you have to escape back to node/npm it becomes a bigger hassle. Using Deno with package.json is easier.
100%. I was all-in on Deno, but there were just too many sharp edges. In contrast, Bun just works.
I would highly recommend giving Deno Fresh[1] a go, it has a lot of the same features as Next.js but I find it to result in a much cleaner codebase overall. This coupled with Deno's built in KV store and hosted on Deploy makes for quite a zen workflow to be honest.
People underestimate the node compatibility that Deno offers. I think the compat env variable will do a lot of adoption. Maybe a denon command or something could enable it automatically? Idk.
The deno compatibility with node has been a lie for me. I tried to port a simple project (100-200 LOC) to deno and it took me an hour which should have been 5-10 minutes. It didn't support some of node's methods and if it did, it was completely undocumented. Had to install basic functionality from some obscure URLS. Onxe it came to porting my test suite I just gave up. The problem was CJS -> ESM transition that was way more painful than I anticipated it to be. And definitely not as simple as deno's docs make it to be. Couldn't just port the whole library
Honestly, I was bullish on Deno back in the day, but I don't see why I'd use it over Bun now.
Less segfault, improved security / capability model
I have yet no reason to fight IT and architects for having anything besides node on CI/CD pipelines and base images for containers.
Crazy that Deno is still not workable on FreeBSD because of the Rust V8 bindings not being ported.
How big is the intersection of modern Javascript developers and FreeBSD users?
Not as big as Linux but I know a few FreeBSD shops that run NodeJS apps so it's not entirely crazy to think that there are more and they would want to try Deno. Besides making your OSS software compilable on *BSD/Linux/Mac/Win has historically been a good thing to do anyways.
Node.js is (maybe surprisingly) used a lot in less common operating systems like FreeBSD and Illumos.
It's more than a little surprising that portability between different Unices is not given more emphasis. "Back in the day" a program being portable between Sun Solaris, HP's HP-UX, Linux, FreeBSD was considered a sign of clean code.
Back in the day, Sun Solaris and HP-UX were not end-of-life, and FreeBSD had more equal industry footing with Linux. Now Linux is the clear winner in server OS UNIX by a wide margin. Also, Ryan Dhal worked at Joyent, a Illumos/Solaris shop when he built Node; perhaps that has informed his lack of interest in supporting FreeBSD these days.
Looks like it is in ports?
Trying to compile it - it's 2.2.0 but better than nothing. I haven't seen any upstream patches for Rust V8 for FBSD so maybe out of tree ones in the ports if it does compile.
I mean... you can probably see why they don't spend any effort on that.
Nice list of solid changes. I really like Deno for scripting random glue code; I use it most places (maybe with the exception of random machine learning stuff, where python/uv fits.) Looking forward to gRPC support later this year, too, for some of my long-tail use cases. And the bundle command looks nice!
I really like that bundle subcommand is back. No need to use workarounds.
I really love where Deno is going, it really is what Node should've been.
My only concern is that they lose patience to their hype-driven competition and start doing hype-driven stuff themselves.
I thought that Deno was the hype-driven competition of nodejs ;)
I believe the reason Deno is not more widely used in production environments is the lack of a standardized vulnerability database (other than using 100% npm compatibility which will take many popular deno packages out of scope). The issue is that there is no real centralized package manager (by design) which makes it challenging.
Was there any development in that direction?
> I believe the reason Deno is not more widely used in production environments is the lack of a standardized vulnerability database
If this were a real blocker, then C/C++ wouldn't be used in production either, since both just lean on the language-agnostic CVE/GHSA/etc databases for any relevant vulnerabilities there... and C also heavily encourages just vendoring in entire files from the internet with no way to track down versions.
Anyway, doesn't "deno.lock" exist, and anyone who cares can opt-in to that, and use the versions in there to check vulnerability databases?
Wouldn't this also be a problem for Go, which just imports from URLs (mostly GitHub) as well?
The go imports use a Google-owned proxy for resolution which has a vulnerability facility. All golang package installs use the Google-owned proxy unless you set GOPROXY=direct when running go commands.
The LSP works quite a bit better than when I tried it a few months ago. It had memory issues back then. Thanks!
Surprised they went with esbuild for bundling instead of Rust based Rolldown which in about to be v1.
esbuild is very stable and mature at this point, Rolldown is still rapidly evolving.
I keep hearing good things about Deno. It might just convince me to try js after all!
These days it might be good to go straight to TS.
Which is what the Deno defaults guide towards as well.
Dont
Big fan of deno, congrats on shipping.
From a security standpoint it really icks me when projects prominently ask their users to do the `curl mywebsite.com/foo.sh | sh` thing. I know risk acceptance is different for many people, but if you download a file before executing it, at least you or your antivirus can check what it actually does.
As supply chain attacks are a significant security risks for a node/deno stack application, the `curl | sh` is a red flag that signals to me that the author of the website prefers convenience over security.
With a curl request directly executed, this can happen:
- the web server behind mywebsite.com/foo.sh provides malware for the first request from your IP, but when you request it again it will show a different, clean file without any code
- MITM attack gives you a different file than others receive
Node/deno applications using the npm ecosystem put a lot of blind trust into npm servers, which are hosted by microsoft, and therefore easily MITM'able by government agencies.
When looking at official docs for deno at https://docs.deno.com/runtime/getting_started/installation/ the second option behind `curl | sh` they're offering is the much more secure `npm install -g deno`. Here at least some file integrity checks and basic malware scanning are done by npm when downloading and installing the package.
Even though deno has excellent programmers working on the main project, the deno.land website might not always be as secure as the main codebase.
Just my two cents, I know it's a slippery slope in terms of security risk but I cannot say that `curl | sh` is good practice.
I really never understood the threat model behind this often repeated argument.
Most of these installation scripts are just simple bootstappers that will eventually download and execute millions lines of code authored and hosted by the same people behind the shell script.
You simply will not be capable of personally auditing those millions lines of code, so this problem boils down to your trust model. If you have so little trust towards the authors behind the project, to the point that you'd suspect them pulling absurdly convoluted ploys like:
> the web server behind mywebsite.com/foo.sh provides malware for the first request from your IP, but when you request it again it will show a different, clean file without any code
How can you trust them to not hide even more malicious code in the binary itself?
I believe the reason why this flawed argument have spread like a mind virus throughout the years is because it is something that is easy to do and easy to parrot in every mildly-relevant thread.
It is easy to audit a 5-line shell script. But to personally audit the millions lines of code behind the binary that that script will blindly download and run anyways? Nah, that's real security work and no one wants to actually do hard work here. We're just here to score some easy points and signal that we're a smart and security-conscious person to our peers.
> which are hosted by microsoft, and therefore easily MITM'able by government agencies.
If your threat model includes government agencies maliciously tampering your Deno binaries, you have far more things to worry about than just curl | sh.
The problem is getting the new users onboarded. Telling people to use 'npm' doesn't help if you don't have npm installed.
How do I install npm? The npm webpage tells me to go and install nvm. At that tells me to use curl | sh .
So using npm for a new user is still requiring a curl | sh, just in a different place.
> much more secure `npm install -g deno`. Here at least some file integrity checks and basic malware scanning are done by npm when downloading and installing the package.
It boils down to the question "is it more likely the attacker can impersonate or control `npm` servers or our own servers. If the answer to that question is "No" then curl pipe sh is not less secure than `npm install`.
This is security theater. If you're assuming an attacker can impersonate anyone in the internet your only secure option is to cut the cable.
using deno isn't good security practice, their sandbox is implemented like stuff from the 90s
Has any attack like this been ever seen in the wild? Not saying it's impossible – but I'm just curious if this vector was ever successfully exploited.
> ask their users to do the `curl mywebsite.com/foo.sh | sh` thing.
Because it's easier than maintaining packages across 10+ package managers. And in case of Linux it might not require sudo to install something.
It would be great if curl could take file integrity hash value as a command line argument.
All the attacks you described also apply to downloading and executing a file. I don't think `curl | sh` is worse in this regard.
how is it more or less good practice than running any untrusted binary on your system? the only possible stuff would be that the script download is broken midway and it becomes a "dangerous script" because eg of a `rm -rf /some/path` which would become a `rm -rf /` but other than that, it's just the same as downloading any executable on your laptop and running them... any attacks you described on the shell download would work with any other binary, which users routinely do