Node.js 16.5.0 Release Highlights and Experimental Web Streams API

Node.js is an open‑source, cross‑platform JavaScript runtime that runs JavaScript on the server side. It is maintained by the Node.js Foundation (now part of the OpenJS Foundation) and is a Linux Foundation project. Node.js uses Google’s V8 engine and an event‑driven, non‑blocking, asynchronous I/O model to boost performance, optimizing throughput and scalability for data‑intensive real‑time applications.

Node.js 16.5.0 has been officially released, and the update includes the following changes:

Experimental Web Streams API:

Node.js now exposes an experimental implementation of the Web Streams API.

Because it is experimental, the API is not added to the global object; it can only be accessed via the new stream/web core module.

import { ReadableStream, WritableStream } from 'stream/web';
// Or from 'node:stream/web'

Importing the module will emit an experimental warning in each process. The raw API has been implemented and work is ongoing to integrate it with existing core APIs.

Significant Changes:

(SEMVER‑MINOR) fs: Allows temporary directory prefix to be an empty string.

deps: Upgrades npm to version 7.19.1.

Other Updates:

build: Updates gcovr for GCC 8 compatibility.

build: Adds RISC‑V to host_arch_cc.

build: Removes unused comments from the Makefile.

build: Enables building riscv64 with the Makefile.

build: Shortens paths used in the tarball build workflow.

build: Passes directories instead of file lists to js2c.py.

build: Stops passing the -mode flag to the V8 test runner.