Ant

Ant 12.1.094641eb.1

A large package-management, REPL, installer, and runtime compatibility release.

This release moves Ant onto the new hash-based version format, brings the package
manager through a major rewrite, adds first-class ants.land tooling, makes the
REPL much more useful day-to-day, and tightens a long list of Node/web runtime
compatibility edges.

Highlights

Package installs are faster and more robust

• Added built-in ants.land registry support.
• Reworked the package manager around the newer Zig 0.16 implementation.
• Improved resolver performance, fallback behavior, and secondary registry lookup paths.
• Added metadata support to the registry path.
• Fixed postinstall lifecycle ordering.
• Added better file-count validation for extracted packages.
• Prevented half-written tarballs from being treated as valid cache entries.
• Added more extraction error logging so broken package installs are easier to diagnose.
• Improved copy behavior across devices on Linux.
• Added trust handling fixes for already-installed packages.
• Prevented libuv from blocking HTTP/2 package downloads.

REPL and interactive use got a lot better

• Added live inspection support.
• Added tab autocomplete.
• Added a CJS/module selector for --eval.
• Added safe inspector expression evaluation for simple expressions and member access.
• Prevented readline history overflow with stricter bounds checks.

Installer and upgrade flow were cleaned up

• Made the install script generated from JS/config instead of hand-maintained shell.
• Switched installer downloads to the manifest-backed Ant download endpoint.
• Added target selection config for macOS, Linux, Windows, and musl Linux.
• Changed Ant versions from timestamp-style semver to major.minor.git-hash.patch.
• Updated Nix version generation to match the new version format.
• Updated ant upgrade to compare same-version builds by build timestamp.

WebSockets and server behavior improved

• Fixed invalid request-target handling.
• Hardened server request URL handling.
• Added server WebSocket configuration options.
• Added per-message-deflate support, payload limits, and compressed-frame handling for server WebSockets.
• Added a @ant/hono package for Hono WebSocket upgrades backed by Ant's native server runtime.

WebCrypto and crypto support expanded

• Added a larger WebCrypto implementation pass.
• Added more algorithm handling around subtle crypto APIs.
• Added HMAC-backed crypto state.
• Added crypto key handling for HMAC and AES-GCM-style keys.
• Added cipher state support for native-backed crypto operations.

Node and web API compatibility improved

• Added fs.fsync(fd, callback) and fs.fsyncSync(fd).
• Added Readable.toWeb.
• Improved fetch/request/response/header behavior.
• Fixed restricted headers being dropped.
• Improved node:http incoming message readability.
• Fixed timer unref exit behavior.
• Improved process behavior and typings.
• Added support for writing bytes in filesystem paths that need it.
• Fixed JSON enum/stringify edge cases.
• Improved Intl support.
• Added String.prototype.startsWith position argument behavior.
• Added better handling for numerical exotic values.
• Fixed collection forEach thisArg behavior.

ESM and CommonJS loading are more correct

• Added better ESM detection.
• Added ambiguous .js handling based on package type and source syntax.
• Added static dependency instantiation before module evaluation.
• Fixed suffix matching in module/package resolution.
• Freed parser ASTs after parsing to reduce retained memory.
• Removed the old generated features.ts path.

JavaScript parser and runtime correctness fixes

• Unterminated template literals now throw correctly.
• Fixed leading-numeral AST/parser behavior.
• Fixed private class parser behavior.
• Fixed window/global identifier shadowing behavior.
• Improved template-literal scanning for nested expressions.

Builds, performance, and binary quality improved

• Optimized linker speed.
• Added optional profile-guided optimization support, including meson/pgo/build.sh and a checked-in Darwin ARM64 profile.
• Added mimalloc as a vendored allocator option.
• Improved Nix packaging and vendor hash update tooling.

Sandbox and platform packaging moved forward

• Added a tmpfs ramdisk path for sandbox usage.
• Added a sandbox patch for a root tmpfs mount.
• Updated sandbox build packaging.

New tests and coverage

• Added tests for CLI eval module selection.
• Added tests for CLI file arguments taking precedence over package scripts.
• Added tests for package lifecycle postinstall ordering.
• Added tests for readline history bounds and piped readline/promises.
• Added tests for REPL static imports.
• Added tests for parser unterminated templates.
• Added tests for server invalid request targets.
• Added tests for stream Readable.toWeb.
• Added tests for fs.fsync and buffer writes.
• Added tests for WebSocket server options and buffered frames.
• Added tests for WebCrypto/crypto extensions.
• Added an allocator benchmark.

To upgrade to Ant 12.1.094641eb.1:

ant upgrade

To install Ant 12.1.094641eb.1:

curl -fsSL https://antjs.org/install | bash