v4.16 Release Notes

Welcome to gatsby@4.16.0 release (June 2022 #1)

Key highlights of this release:

• Speed Improvements for Image Processing
• useContentfulImage hook
• Node 18 Compatibility

Also check out notable bugfixes.

Bleeding Edge: Want to try new features as soon as possible? Install gatsby@next and let us know if you have any issues.

Previous release notes

Full changelog

Speed Improvements for Image Processing

After updating gatsby-plugin-image and gatsby-plugin-sharp, you should see a considerate amount of time saved during image processing as two improvements were shipped. In PR #35791 the image metadata to calculcate things like dominant color was moved to a cache that persists between builds leading to increased speed on subsequent builds. In PR #35814 the image is getting resized before calculating the dominant color as this can get slow for really large images. This may be a less accurate representation, but for a placeholder it is good enough. Thanks to ascorbic for contributing both PRs.

useContentfulImage hook

With useContentfulImage and the URL to the image on the Contentful Image API you can create dynamic images on the fly:

Learn more in the useContentfulImage documentation.

Node 18 Compatibility

In a series of PRs we’ve ensured that Gatsby and its dependencies are compatible with Node 18:

• In PR #35585 lmdb was updated as in never versions it ships with prebuilt binaries for Node 18.
• In PR #35621 we migrated from source-map to @jridgewell/trace-mapping as source-map in incompatible with Node 18.
• In PR #35782 we updated Parcel to 2.6.0 to update its internal lmdb dependency.

Notable bugfixes & improvements

• gatsby:
  • Remove exports in Gatsby files before compiling SSR/DSG engines, via PR #35749
  • Prioritize raw body parser, via PR #35780
• gatsby-plugin-preload-fonts: Disable Puppeteer cache, via PR #34633
• gatsby-source-drupal: Allow sites to configure the request timeout, via PR #35794
• gatsby-plugin-utils: Add new setRequestHeaders API, via PR #35655
• gatsby-plugin-utils: Add contentDigest to image cdn args, via PR #35816
• gatsby-plugin-mdx: Don’t allow JS frontmatter by default, via PR #35830

Contributors

A big Thank You to our community who contributed to this release 💜

• trevorblades: fix(docs): Lowercase typename PR #35821
• Danishkhurshid: fix(gatsby-source-drupal): Add a check for data prop PR #35719
• rutterjt: chore(docs): Fix videoSourceURL markdown key mismatch PR #35755
• benogle: chore(docs): Add articles to awesome gatsby resources PR #35738
• Apprentice76: fix(gatsby-source-filesystem): Update createRemoteFileNode args PR #35422
• tsdexter: fix(gatsby-source-wordpress): bug patch for issue 35460 PR #35817
• AbdallahAbis: chore(docs): Remove typo in Script guide PR #35826
• axe312ger
  • Contentful: respect gatsby-plugin-image defaults and extend tests PR #33536
  • chore: clean up yarn.lock PR #35502
  • feat(contentful): new useContentfulHook to create images on client side PR #29263
• tordans: chore(docs): Update using-web-fonts for fontsource PR #35579
• ascorbic
  • feat(gatsby-plugin-sharp): cache image metadata PR #35791
  • perf(gatsby-plugin-image): downsize image before extracting dominant color PR #35814
• just-boris: fix(gatsby): Remove removeOffCanvasPaths svgo option PR #35788
• varunsh-coder: chore(stale-action): Add GitHub token permissions PR #35713
• Foo-x: fix(gatsby-plugin-preload-fonts): disable cache PR #34633
• joshuacox: chore(docs): Update outdated building a theme tutorial snippets PR #35792