The Deno team has revealed their plans for the near future. The runtime environment should increase in speed and become more compatible with npm.
According to the Deno team, there are big changes ahead for Deno. The JavaScript and TypeScript runtime is intended to offer better interoperability with the Node Package Manager npm and become the fastest JavaScript runtime environment. Larger companies that use Deno can also apply for free support.
Originally developed by Node.js inventor Ryan Dahl to fix the weaknesses of the JavaScript runtime, Deno now has more than 250,000 monthly users and over 4 million downloads on GitHub. The runtime environment for JavaScript, TypeScript and WebAssembly uses the JavaScript engine V8 and is developed in Rust. It is supposed to offer security by default, for example because it does not allow file or network access by default. Deno consists of a single executable without dependencies and can be installed on Windows, macOS and Linux.
On the way to the fastest JavaScript runtime
The Deno team has no lesser goal than to make Deno the fastest JavaScript runtime. According to a blog entry, there is no doubt about the success of the project due to the V8 and Rust substructure. Among other things, the development team is currently working on overhauling the Deno HTTP server and has already announced that it is the fastest JavaScript web server ever developed.
As part of the performance improvements, innovations are also planned for the Deno Ops system: Integration with the V8 Fast API should enable fast calls from JavaScript to native code. Deno 1.20 already laid the foundation for this. The Foreign Function Interface (FFI) should also receive an update. According to the Deno team, users of Deno should notice the speed advantages noticeably “before the summer is over”.
npm interoperability and enterprise benefits
According to the development team, the Deno community has expressed a desire to be able to more easily work with JavaScript code that is written for Node.js and is available as an npm package. The Deno team would like to comply with this wish in the future and make it possible to easily import npm packages into Deno. Within the next three months, 80 to 90 percent of the npm packages should be usable in Deno.
Special npm URLs are used for this, for example import express from "npm:express@5";. npm modules referenced this way as a dependency will not have a node_modules folder as well as a npm install own. They are automatically downloaded into the Deno cache and should be able to be used with all Deno tooling, such as type checking.
In the future, the development team will offer free office hours for Deno users in a commercial setting. These so-called Deno Office Hours are intended to support companies with technical difficulties and give the development team insights into what Deno is used for. Anyone who uses Deno in a company environment can apply for free support using a form. Prioritization should be based on company size and urgency.
Those interested can read about these and other plans in a Deno blog entry.
