Astro 5.12 adds TOML support, Netlify dev experience & experimental raw environment values

Astro 5.12 has been released as the newest version of this web framework, aimed at developers building fast content sites, advanced web applications, and server-side application programming interfaces.

Among its headline changes, Astro 5.12 now brings native support for TOML (Tom's Obvious Minimal Language) files in content collections. These files are supported alongside Markdown, JSON, and YAML, expanding options for content management in Astro projects. This enhancement is intended for developers working with diverse content formats.

Alongside this, the Netlify adapter for Astro now uses Netlify's own Vite plugin during local development. This allows access to the full range of Netlify platform features and primitives directly within the Astro development server, eliminating the previous requirement to use the Netlify command-line interface for local testing.

Developers can also try an experimental configuration setting that lets them opt out of Astro's default behavior of automatically converting environment variable strings such as true, false, 1, and 0 to their respective data types. This change is designed to align Astro's behavior with Vite for environment variables, offering more predictable results.

The 5.12 release also includes additional minor enhancements and bug fixes for improved stability.