provide helper methods

[bnb]

currently, there are very few helper methods. you must already know what you're looking for and access it by name.

ideally, the following helper methods would exist to support that selection:

• enumerate all versions that can be used as identifiers (i.e. v7, v12, v17)
• enumerate all codenames that can be used as identifiers (i.e. carbon)
• enumerate all start dates, lts dates, maintenance dates, and end dates without having to know to which release lines they belong

further, it'd be really nice to have additional helper methods:

• provide a way to access the first release of each type in each line
  • first active lts version (this information exists in a easy and programmatically accessible way), first maintenance version (this information exists, not sure if it's easy/programmatically accessible)
• security releases
  • enumerate all
  • enumerate all in a version
  • enumerate all in a codename
  • enumerate all in an alias
  • enumerate latest for all the above
• if Include missing information to have feature parity with /dist/index.json #19 is agreed upon, including a way to query that information (i.e. answer questions like "which release first included npm v8.0.0 or greater)

I mostly care about the accessing the first release in each LTS release line, but wanted to make sure I was providing a complete log of everything that should (imo) be available.

[wesleytodd]

I am trying to knock out all the stuff in your list of missing things. After that I think this is a great idea.

[bnb]

@wesleytodd at this point, I've largely moved on and built my own tool for this that does everything I documented here plus more. I appreciate you doing this! I also don't really have energy to be involved in nv and also maintain my own, and I want to continue maintaining nodevu.