6 ms·

JavaScript Libraries Are Almost Never Updated Once Installed

74 points by zackbloom 7y ago

karimmaassen 7y ago
I never understood the need (desire) to update your dependencies as much and often as possible. As long as a project builds and runs without any issues, why put effort in upgrading libraries and exposing yourself to possible issues.
- r_singh 7y ago
  I get where you're coming from, however, I think having an update cycle, even if it's something like once in 18 months, is important, especially as a responsibility one has to their project's successors. There's nothing worse than coming to a project riddled with deprecation warnings and when one tries to update, breaking changes in libraries result in a ton of issues. Also, it can (and most likely will at some point) affect your release dates when unexpected issues arise due to deprecated APIs.
  - CaptArmchair 7y ago
    > deprecation warnings That's a smell. It means someone only did a partial upgrade of the stack. This isn't limited to libraries, it also includes everything else, like having the latest version of $language installed instead of an earlier - compatible - version. When you work on legacy, your first step would be trying to get it to run on the intended version of the stack before trying to move towards a recent target. > when one tries to update, breaking changes in libraries result in a ton of issues That's par for the course with any technology. Try replacing the spark plugs of an 1980's car model with their 2020 counterparts. A car restorer would look for matching parts of that era. Updating legacy code is much like Theseus' Ship. You change parts of the ship while sailing. So, whatever you do: you make sure the ship doesn't sink en route. If you're working on legacy, the stakeholders - clients, users,... - aren't interested in specific versions of the underlying libraries. They simply want to get to their destination, and they need a seaworthy ship i.e. usable software. Now, a stakeholder may go "Oh! I want shiny feature X!", but then you might need to go through the pain of upgrading the entire ship. As a programmer, it's your job to put that choice succinctly in front of a PO or PM: "Either it's spending a lot of time & money upgrading, or not having shiny feature X." It's NOT your job or responsibility to decide whether or not the upgrade actually needs to be done. The same is true about security or safety. If a client (or your boss) isn't willing to invest in an upgrade path, then there's not much you can't do about that. Except for walking away - jump ship - if you can't bear to see the storm ahead. There's an iron triangle of trade-offs: cheap / good / fast. Pick two, you can never have all three. As a programmer, your goal isn't to write code with the language du jour. It's solving a problem your boss and / or your clients put in front of you.
- toyg 7y ago
  Security issues are a thing. They are more likely on the server side, but still.
- codebje 7y ago
  Unless it's a dead project, failing to perform maintenance will add to the cost of change, ultimately quite sharply.
  - owl57 7y ago
    Thanks for putting it that succintly. It got me thinking if that cost of change is always a bad thing. A lot of programs tend to fall into one of two ends of the spectrum: 1) Everyone is afraid to change anything. 2) The program is constantly improving, to the point that I never use that word other than sarcastically. Now, threat (1) is older than computers. But threat (2), though not exactly new, is greatly facilitated by the web platform. Now, when there is real competition, do you find yourself preferring constantly changing apps or crufty ones?
- cookiengineer 7y ago
  > why put effort in upgrading libraries and exposing yourself to possible issues. Isn't this what the combination of a "package manager" with semantic versioning scheme actually should automate? Personally, I think this is where NPM failed and still fails. They should enforce a binary format that ships with header files (and method signatures), and enforce semantic versioning. If any library doesn't play by the semantic rules, don't let it publish. That's the authority and responsibility that NPM failed to include. If everybody plays by the semantic rules ... then libraries can be upgraded automatically without breaking anything. And a huge plus: They can be installed as _shared_ libraries, which is such an old concept that it hurts my fingers having to type its advantages.
  - OJFord 7y ago
    How do you enforce it? Cargo (rust) considered it, using the vastly more information it has about whether signatures have changed than NPM, but rejected it because you can still make breaking changes without changing a function signature, so why claim to detect it if only a subset can be.
    - edynoid 7y ago
      You can get pretty far with a statically typed, purely functional language. For example, Elm's package manager enforces semantic versioning: https://elm-lang.org/ https://elm-lang.org/ I don't think you can do that with JavaScript.
      - OJFord 7y ago
        You can always break an API with the values, however much you do with the types. Its effectiveness also varies with how much and well types are used - e.g. whether you return `String` or `Url` to begin with.
- bdg 7y ago
  Not updating now prevents you from being able to update later. The entire security thing. Not getting "free value" of performance fixes, bug fixes, new features, etc.
- macrael 7y ago
  The main reason is security. When a security vulnerability is patched in a new version of one of the libraries you use, you should upgrade, and if you haven't upgraded it in two years it is gonna be a pain in the ass. On one of our projects we've got what I think is the best take on this I've seen. Once a week, CI updates all our dependencies and makes fresh PR. That PR then goes through CI and can be merged by an engineer if it looks good.
- tracer4201 7y ago
  Security and availability. If you’re at a large company, not updating your dependencies could mean an outage, losing customer or other data you don’t want exposed to the world. A simpler way to state it is it could be the death of your company.
- scotty79 7y ago
  I always update libraries when I'm revisiting a project. This help me to engage with the project because the thing that motivates me most is if something doesn't work. And after updating libraries something usually doesn't.
- knightofmars 7y ago
  Because it is a major security issue to not keep up with library upgrades and general maintenance. It's in the OWASP top 10 for a reason. The Equifax breach is a perfect example of why ignoring library upgrades is a high risk behavior for any organization. https://owasp.org/www-project-top-ten/OWASP_Top_Ten_2017/Top_10-2017_A9-Using_Components_with_Known_Vulnerabilities https://owasp.org/www-project-top-ten/OWASP_Top_Ten_2017/Top...
FloatArtifact 7y ago
I would imagine because Security issues are exposed in dependencies.
rmist 7y ago
I believe its mainly inertia and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality.
onion2k 7y ago
This applies to libraries installed using <script src="://cdnjs.com/path-to-lib.js">. Most cdns have a 'latest' path but using that can result in your site breaking when a dependency changes. Web developers need to stop taking the lazy option and test more. JS libraries installed using npm to be bundled in are pinned to the major version, so they usally update to the latest minor or patch whenever the thing is deployed. That's still a problem because it only works if an app is actively maintained and deployed regularly, but it's better than nothing.
- cm2187 7y ago
  It is a myth that all websites (or applications) have an active development team continuously deploying updates. I would even expect that the vast majority of the code in production in the world is old code that is not looked after. This is particularly true for small non-tech companies that outsourced the development, and for internal systems in large organisations where the developers have been re-assigned to other projects. This is why technologies that assume active development, like containers, cloud APIs, etc are in my opinion a disaster in the making.
  - gtirloni 7y ago
    Fully agree. I think it means small non-tech companies are better off sticking to SaaS offerings instead of rolling out their own (e.g. wordpress.com vs hosting your own). It's limiting in some cases but at least it's actively developed.
  - OJFord 7y ago
    > This is why technologies that assume active development, like containers, cloud APIs, etc are in my opinion a disaster in the making. I assume you mean because the API might change under your feet, but containers?
    - cm2187 7y ago
      Because to update the components of a container you need to recreate it from source image, assuming where you took the source image from will have been updated 10y later, and assuming someone will have both the knowledge and the right version of the tools to deploy your container. And if you have a container orchestration ecosystem then we are in cloud API territory. (Change and deprecated)
speedgoose 7y ago
I try to run `npm-check -u` at least once a week. It takes some time when a dependency has a breaking change or a project that I don't trust to respect semantic versioning is updated and I have to check its git diff, but in practice my projects have up to date dependencies without much efforts.
BiteCode_dev 7y ago
If there are no security problems affecting your project, and you don't benefit from new features, there is no urge to update. And even then, it's a cost/benefit ratio. Updating is a constraint, one you follow either because it solves a problem or avoid a pitfall, not a goal. I migrated most of my stuff to Python 3 years ago, but for some of my clients, despite that 2.7 is not supported anymore, I advice to just download a copy of everything they need offline as a safety measure and keep the system running as-is forever. Raw HTML + jQuery + Django 1.x + VPS still deliver fine. Just because I can do react + microservices does not mean it should be a default response. There are servers running barely touched from one or two decades ago and they do their job perfectly. So yes, some client side libs are going to be there for years and years. If the UI works, it's alright. Software is not an end, it's a tool. Being passionate about it, it's easy to forget that, but we use software to help the real world, not the other way around. Not saying of course you should never update nor use modern technology when appropriate: technical debt must be paid. But it's important to recognize when you need to do it, and when you just want a shiny toy or to look good.
rodw 7y ago
"JavaScript Libraries Are Almost Never Updated Once Installed" ...on an website. I imagine the ease with which one can type `npm i` or `yarn install` means that server-side JavaScript libraries are updated frequently. Wasn't that the whole problem with that leftpad thing? Out of curiosity I went to look for the most frequently downloaded (installed) library on npm, which apparently is not directly available, but here's a pretty arbitrary selection of things that came to mind: * express - last release 8 months - 11.4m downloads this week * React (which is pretty browser-oriented, right?) - last release 3 months ago - 6.5m downloads this week * Underscore - last release 1 month ago - 6.7m downloads this week * jquery (almost exclusively browser-oriented, certainly DOM oriented) - last release 9 mos ago - 3.1m downloads this week It seems like someone must be keeping up-to-date. Also "installed" is a misleading statement in the web context, JavsScript libraries aren't _installed_ they are _integrated_ with the site, which means an upgrade isn't free, it's a semi-new integration effort.

74 points by zackbloom 7y ago

I never understood the need (desire) to update your dependencies as much and often as possible. As long as a project builds and runs without any issues, why put effort in upgrading libraries and exposing yourself to possible issues.

r_singh 7y ago
I get where you're coming from, however, I think having an update cycle, even if it's something like once in 18 months, is important, especially as a responsibility one has to their project's successors. There's nothing worse than coming to a project riddled with deprecation warnings and when one tries to update, breaking changes in libraries result in a ton of issues. Also, it can (and most likely will at some point) affect your release dates when unexpected issues arise due to deprecated APIs.
- CaptArmchair 7y ago
  > deprecation warnings That's a smell. It means someone only did a partial upgrade of the stack. This isn't limited to libraries, it also includes everything else, like having the latest version of $language installed instead of an earlier - compatible - version. When you work on legacy, your first step would be trying to get it to run on the intended version of the stack before trying to move towards a recent target. > when one tries to update, breaking changes in libraries result in a ton of issues That's par for the course with any technology. Try replacing the spark plugs of an 1980's car model with their 2020 counterparts. A car restorer would look for matching parts of that era. Updating legacy code is much like Theseus' Ship. You change parts of the ship while sailing. So, whatever you do: you make sure the ship doesn't sink en route. If you're working on legacy, the stakeholders - clients, users,... - aren't interested in specific versions of the underlying libraries. They simply want to get to their destination, and they need a seaworthy ship i.e. usable software. Now, a stakeholder may go "Oh! I want shiny feature X!", but then you might need to go through the pain of upgrading the entire ship. As a programmer, it's your job to put that choice succinctly in front of a PO or PM: "Either it's spending a lot of time & money upgrading, or not having shiny feature X." It's NOT your job or responsibility to decide whether or not the upgrade actually needs to be done. The same is true about security or safety. If a client (or your boss) isn't willing to invest in an upgrade path, then there's not much you can't do about that. Except for walking away - jump ship - if you can't bear to see the storm ahead. There's an iron triangle of trade-offs: cheap / good / fast. Pick two, you can never have all three. As a programmer, your goal isn't to write code with the language du jour. It's solving a problem your boss and / or your clients put in front of you.
toyg 7y ago
Security issues are a thing. They are more likely on the server side, but still.
codebje 7y ago
Unless it's a dead project, failing to perform maintenance will add to the cost of change, ultimately quite sharply.
- owl57 7y ago
  Thanks for putting it that succintly. It got me thinking if that cost of change is always a bad thing. A lot of programs tend to fall into one of two ends of the spectrum: 1) Everyone is afraid to change anything. 2) The program is constantly improving, to the point that I never use that word other than sarcastically. Now, threat (1) is older than computers. But threat (2), though not exactly new, is greatly facilitated by the web platform. Now, when there is real competition, do you find yourself preferring constantly changing apps or crufty ones?
cookiengineer 7y ago
> why put effort in upgrading libraries and exposing yourself to possible issues. Isn't this what the combination of a "package manager" with semantic versioning scheme actually should automate? Personally, I think this is where NPM failed and still fails. They should enforce a binary format that ships with header files (and method signatures), and enforce semantic versioning. If any library doesn't play by the semantic rules, don't let it publish. That's the authority and responsibility that NPM failed to include. If everybody plays by the semantic rules ... then libraries can be upgraded automatically without breaking anything. And a huge plus: They can be installed as _shared_ libraries, which is such an old concept that it hurts my fingers having to type its advantages.
- OJFord 7y ago
  How do you enforce it? Cargo (rust) considered it, using the vastly more information it has about whether signatures have changed than NPM, but rejected it because you can still make breaking changes without changing a function signature, so why claim to detect it if only a subset can be.
  - edynoid 7y ago
    You can get pretty far with a statically typed, purely functional language. For example, Elm's package manager enforces semantic versioning: https://elm-lang.org/ https://elm-lang.org/ I don't think you can do that with JavaScript.
    - OJFord 7y ago
      You can always break an API with the values, however much you do with the types. Its effectiveness also varies with how much and well types are used - e.g. whether you return `String` or `Url` to begin with.
bdg 7y ago
Not updating now prevents you from being able to update later. The entire security thing. Not getting "free value" of performance fixes, bug fixes, new features, etc.
macrael 7y ago
The main reason is security. When a security vulnerability is patched in a new version of one of the libraries you use, you should upgrade, and if you haven't upgraded it in two years it is gonna be a pain in the ass. On one of our projects we've got what I think is the best take on this I've seen. Once a week, CI updates all our dependencies and makes fresh PR. That PR then goes through CI and can be merged by an engineer if it looks good.
tracer4201 7y ago
Security and availability. If you’re at a large company, not updating your dependencies could mean an outage, losing customer or other data you don’t want exposed to the world. A simpler way to state it is it could be the death of your company.
scotty79 7y ago
I always update libraries when I'm revisiting a project. This help me to engage with the project because the thing that motivates me most is if something doesn't work. And after updating libraries something usually doesn't.
knightofmars 7y ago
Because it is a major security issue to not keep up with library upgrades and general maintenance. It's in the OWASP top 10 for a reason. The Equifax breach is a perfect example of why ignoring library upgrades is a high risk behavior for any organization. https://owasp.org/www-project-top-ten/OWASP_Top_Ten_2017/Top_10-2017_A9-Using_Components_with_Known_Vulnerabilities https://owasp.org/www-project-top-ten/OWASP_Top_Ten_2017/Top...

FloatArtifact 7y ago

I would imagine because Security issues are exposed in dependencies.

rmist 7y ago

I believe its mainly inertia and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality.

onion2k 7y ago

This applies to libraries installed using <script src="://cdnjs.com/path-to-lib.js">. Most cdns have a 'latest' path but using that can result in your site breaking when a dependency changes. Web developers need to stop taking the lazy option and test more. JS libraries installed using npm to be bundled in are pinned to the major version, so they usally update to the latest minor or patch whenever the thing is deployed. That's still a problem because it only works if an app is actively maintained and deployed regularly, but it's better than nothing.

cm2187 7y ago
It is a myth that all websites (or applications) have an active development team continuously deploying updates. I would even expect that the vast majority of the code in production in the world is old code that is not looked after. This is particularly true for small non-tech companies that outsourced the development, and for internal systems in large organisations where the developers have been re-assigned to other projects. This is why technologies that assume active development, like containers, cloud APIs, etc are in my opinion a disaster in the making.
- gtirloni 7y ago
  Fully agree. I think it means small non-tech companies are better off sticking to SaaS offerings instead of rolling out their own (e.g. wordpress.com vs hosting your own). It's limiting in some cases but at least it's actively developed.
- OJFord 7y ago
  > This is why technologies that assume active development, like containers, cloud APIs, etc are in my opinion a disaster in the making. I assume you mean because the API might change under your feet, but containers?
  - cm2187 7y ago
    Because to update the components of a container you need to recreate it from source image, assuming where you took the source image from will have been updated 10y later, and assuming someone will have both the knowledge and the right version of the tools to deploy your container. And if you have a container orchestration ecosystem then we are in cloud API territory. (Change and deprecated)

speedgoose 7y ago

I try to run `npm-check -u` at least once a week. It takes some time when a dependency has a breaking change or a project that I don't trust to respect semantic versioning is updated and I have to check its git diff, but in practice my projects have up to date dependencies without much efforts.

BiteCode_dev 7y ago

If there are no security problems affecting your project, and you don't benefit from new features, there is no urge to update. And even then, it's a cost/benefit ratio. Updating is a constraint, one you follow either because it solves a problem or avoid a pitfall, not a goal. I migrated most of my stuff to Python 3 years ago, but for some of my clients, despite that 2.7 is not supported anymore, I advice to just download a copy of everything they need offline as a safety measure and keep the system running as-is forever. Raw HTML + jQuery + Django 1.x + VPS still deliver fine. Just because I can do react + microservices does not mean it should be a default response. There are servers running barely touched from one or two decades ago and they do their job perfectly. So yes, some client side libs are going to be there for years and years. If the UI works, it's alright. Software is not an end, it's a tool. Being passionate about it, it's easy to forget that, but we use software to help the real world, not the other way around. Not saying of course you should never update nor use modern technology when appropriate: technical debt must be paid. But it's important to recognize when you need to do it, and when you just want a shiny toy or to look good.

rodw 7y ago

"JavaScript Libraries Are Almost Never Updated Once Installed" ...on an website. I imagine the ease with which one can type `npm i` or `yarn install` means that server-side JavaScript libraries are updated frequently. Wasn't that the whole problem with that leftpad thing? Out of curiosity I went to look for the most frequently downloaded (installed) library on npm, which apparently is not directly available, but here's a pretty arbitrary selection of things that came to mind: * express - last release 8 months - 11.4m downloads this week * React (which is pretty browser-oriented, right?) - last release 3 months ago - 6.5m downloads this week * Underscore - last release 1 month ago - 6.7m downloads this week * jquery (almost exclusively browser-oriented, certainly DOM oriented) - last release 9 mos ago - 3.1m downloads this week It seems like someone must be keeping up-to-date. Also "installed" is a misleading statement in the web context, JavsScript libraries aren't _installed_ they are _integrated_ with the site, which means an upgrade isn't free, it's a semi-new integration effort.