5 ms·

Node.js 8.10 runtime now available in AWS Lambda

91 points by mafro 9y ago

Blackstone4 9y ago
This is massive for AWS Lambda (and we've waited a long time for this). We can now use async/await without transpiling our code. Thereby making it more readable. We should hopefully see improved performance and startup times.
- niklasrde 9y ago
  async/await is still slower in 8.10 than promises though, isn't it? Also, I'd be interested to find out why this is so massive? We've been waiting a long time for this, and I get that Lambda is complex with lambda@edge and all that, but how much tweaking does AWS do to the node runtime before they can deploy this? Node 8 has been out for 10 months, and it's been LTS for half a year - or did they simply wait for it to be stable enough to run, or anything specific in 8.10?
  - hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
    > async/await is still slower in 8.10 than promises though, isn't it? No, it's not. Async/await is basically just syntactic sugar around promises.
  - bastawhiz 9y ago
    In a world where cold starts have a substantial impact on performance, the runtime cost of async/await is negligible. If your function takes even a second longer to execute because of await use, I'd be incredibly surprised.
  - Blackstone4 9y ago
    Maybe massive was an exaggeration. Before node 8.10, AWS Lambda used 6.10 which was frustrating. If you used async/await so you would have to transpile your code or upload a node binary. So really it's more convenient. Not sure why it takes 10 months to move to the new runtime. On the whole I feel like the JS/TS eco-system is getting better and better. Especially since browsers and runtimes are converging towards ES6/7 :)
kondro 9y ago
Have been waiting on this for a very long time. Hopefully AWS will keep up-to-date with LTS versions more quickly in the future. :-)
taf2 9y ago
Perhaps this will make headless chromium easier https://www.npmjs.com/package/@browserless/aws-lambda-chrome https://www.npmjs.com/package/@browserless/aws-lambda-chrome
cordite 9y ago
It was said back in a blog post for the introduction of aws batch, but when will we be able to also use lambda functions in a batch environment? (The job isn’t too complex, it just needs to run longer than 5 minutes (an hour or two))
Vinnl 9y ago
Has anyone already managed to get this working? I currently get: expected runtime to be one of [nodejs4.3 nodejs6.10 java8 python2.7 python3.6 dotnetcore1.0 dotnetcore2.0 nodejs4.3-edge go1.x], got nodejs8.10 It might be due to my using TerraForm and that needing an update, but it's also not yet listed in the docs: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/API_CreateFunction.html#SSS-CreateFunction-request-Runtime https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/API_CreateFunct... Or perhaps it's not available in all regions yet?
- ReidZB 9y ago
  The AWS provider for Terraform doesn't support the new runtime yet, yeah. See: https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-aws/issues/4019 https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-aw... (issue) https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-aws/pull/4020 https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-aw... (PR)
  - Vinnl 9y ago
    Ah, thanks - I didn't know where to look.
bnjmn 9y ago
This update was a very long time coming, so I'm grateful that it finally happened. Still, it's disappointing that they couldn't change course (ever so slightly!) to accommodate the 8.11.0 security update from a week ago: https://nodejs.org/en/blog/release/v8.11.0/ https://nodejs.org/en/blog/release/v8.11.0/ Really hope they'll be keeping up-to-date with incremental Node 8 releases, now that they've (almost) caught up with the times.
- bnjmn 9y ago
  Wow, I commented about this on the blog post, and they apparently deleted my comment. Cool.
  - jeffbarr 9y ago
    We review and then approve all on-topic comments, but are working through a bit of a backlog this morning from what I understand.
tnolet 9y ago
Was waiting for this update! Running Puppeteer related projects will now be a ton easier for ad hoc project. I'm pretty deep into this with https://checklyhq.com https://checklyhq.com so not really an "ad hoc" user. Some open concerns for "real" production use are still: - cost: memory heavy (1,5Gb) lambda get costly quickly - stability: No reason to assume this is bad, but running a Chromium browser in Docker is/was pretty tricky - startuptime: Booting Chrome might be a time suck Coupling this with SQS triggers for Lambda might make spinning up VM's obsolete for my business.
giorgioz 9y ago
New LTS versions of node have been released in September/October for the last two years and AWS Lambda has added support for them around April/May for the last two years. I wonder if they purposefully wait for x.10 update (6.10 and 8.10) or it has something to do with internal management of projects.
BillinghamJ 9y ago
Looks like this isn't available for use with Lambda@Edge/CloudFront. Very disappointing :\

91 points by mafro 9y ago

This is massive for AWS Lambda (and we've waited a long time for this). We can now use async/await without transpiling our code. Thereby making it more readable. We should hopefully see improved performance and startup times.

niklasrde 9y ago
async/await is still slower in 8.10 than promises though, isn't it? Also, I'd be interested to find out why this is so massive? We've been waiting a long time for this, and I get that Lambda is complex with lambda@edge and all that, but how much tweaking does AWS do to the node runtime before they can deploy this? Node 8 has been out for 10 months, and it's been LTS for half a year - or did they simply wait for it to be stable enough to run, or anything specific in 8.10?
- hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
  > async/await is still slower in 8.10 than promises though, isn't it? No, it's not. Async/await is basically just syntactic sugar around promises.
- bastawhiz 9y ago
  In a world where cold starts have a substantial impact on performance, the runtime cost of async/await is negligible. If your function takes even a second longer to execute because of await use, I'd be incredibly surprised.
- Blackstone4 9y ago
  Maybe massive was an exaggeration. Before node 8.10, AWS Lambda used 6.10 which was frustrating. If you used async/await so you would have to transpile your code or upload a node binary. So really it's more convenient. Not sure why it takes 10 months to move to the new runtime. On the whole I feel like the JS/TS eco-system is getting better and better. Especially since browsers and runtimes are converging towards ES6/7 :)

kondro 9y ago

Have been waiting on this for a very long time. Hopefully AWS will keep up-to-date with LTS versions more quickly in the future. :-)

taf2 9y ago

Perhaps this will make headless chromium easier https://www.npmjs.com/package/@browserless/aws-lambda-chrome https://www.npmjs.com/package/@browserless/aws-lambda-chrome

cordite 9y ago

It was said back in a blog post for the introduction of aws batch, but when will we be able to also use lambda functions in a batch environment? (The job isn’t too complex, it just needs to run longer than 5 minutes (an hour or two))

Vinnl 9y ago

Has anyone already managed to get this working? I currently get: expected runtime to be one of [nodejs4.3 nodejs6.10 java8 python2.7 python3.6 dotnetcore1.0 dotnetcore2.0 nodejs4.3-edge go1.x], got nodejs8.10 It might be due to my using TerraForm and that needing an update, but it's also not yet listed in the docs: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/API_CreateFunction.html#SSS-CreateFunction-request-Runtime https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/API_CreateFunct... Or perhaps it's not available in all regions yet?

ReidZB 9y ago
The AWS provider for Terraform doesn't support the new runtime yet, yeah. See: https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-aws/issues/4019 https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-aw... (issue) https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-aws/pull/4020 https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-aw... (PR)
- Vinnl 9y ago
  Ah, thanks - I didn't know where to look.

bnjmn 9y ago

This update was a very long time coming, so I'm grateful that it finally happened. Still, it's disappointing that they couldn't change course (ever so slightly!) to accommodate the 8.11.0 security update from a week ago: https://nodejs.org/en/blog/release/v8.11.0/ https://nodejs.org/en/blog/release/v8.11.0/ Really hope they'll be keeping up-to-date with incremental Node 8 releases, now that they've (almost) caught up with the times.

bnjmn 9y ago
Wow, I commented about this on the blog post, and they apparently deleted my comment. Cool.
- jeffbarr 9y ago
  We review and then approve all on-topic comments, but are working through a bit of a backlog this morning from what I understand.

tnolet 9y ago

Was waiting for this update! Running Puppeteer related projects will now be a ton easier for ad hoc project. I'm pretty deep into this with https://checklyhq.com https://checklyhq.com so not really an "ad hoc" user. Some open concerns for "real" production use are still: - cost: memory heavy (1,5Gb) lambda get costly quickly - stability: No reason to assume this is bad, but running a Chromium browser in Docker is/was pretty tricky - startuptime: Booting Chrome might be a time suck Coupling this with SQS triggers for Lambda might make spinning up VM's obsolete for my business.

giorgioz 9y ago

New LTS versions of node have been released in September/October for the last two years and AWS Lambda has added support for them around April/May for the last two years. I wonder if they purposefully wait for x.10 update (6.10 and 8.10) or it has something to do with internal management of projects.

BillinghamJ 9y ago

Looks like this isn't available for use with Lambda@Edge/CloudFront. Very disappointing :\