Return a promise

[MajorBreakfast]

Since the library is already written with promises, it'd be nice if it could return a promise. I generally prefer promises over callbacks, because they're really nice to work with in conjunction with async functions 😋

[iarna]

Agreed, I would love a patch that makes it behave like Bluebird's asCallback method, eg, hybrid mode where a promise is always returned and a callback is used if one is provided.

[coreyfarrell]

@iarna what is the node.js support policy for this module? Specifically are you open to a breaking change to require node.js 8? This would allow use of util.promisify and async/await making it very simple to implement a promise API which still supported the callback argument. I know it's a big jump from the currently supported versions so I understand if this idea is not acceptable.

[iarna]

@coreyfarrell This module currently supports node 4 up. Removing things from that list is a breaking change. The npm cli support policy is "any version supported by the Node Foundation", AND the list can only change on major version bumps. This seems like a generally solid rule to apply for libraries as well. Node 6 doesn't drop out of support until April 30th. After that date, a Node 8+ version could be released under a new major.

However, I should note that I will not be in a position to 👍 or 👎 changes like this when that date comes.

[coreyfarrell]

I hadn't realized they bumped the date, I thought April 1st was the EOL date (nodejs/Release#421).

In any case I wish you the best on whatever comes next for you!

[sindresorhus]

Node 6 doesn't drop out of support until April 30th. After that date, a Node 8+ version could be released under a new major.

That date has passed.

[coreyfarrell]

I've opened #44. One thing that I'm not sure about is the Promise option. In my current patch this option is still honored for the per file serialize logic only. So a custom promise is only used for that one thing, everything else uses native promises. I feel like my PR makes the Promise option fake. Should support for custom promises be removed?

[isaacs]

I think if we're going to drop support for Node.js 6 in a semver major update, then dropping custom promises makes sense. Native promises are very good now.