What is ".v8flags.3.14.5.9.{Name}"?

Question

I am doing a clean install of Windows 10 Professional (x64) and am noticing some peculiar files appearing in the root of my home directory, specifically I see...

.v8flags.3.14.5.9.Ciel

Ciel is obviously my username; I've tried to do a search on this file and found very little - the best I can tell is that it relates to nodejs, which might make sense because I have Visual Studio 2015 installed.

Can anyone else identify what this file is, and if I need to keep it?

Answer 1

You can safely delete it.

The file is used by the nodejs module v8flags for caching. If you delete it it will create a new one on next run.

I guess it was created because Gulp depends on v8flags and:

The ASP.NET 5 templates included in Visual Studio 2015 use Gulp, and they install Gulp into your project’s node_components folder so it’s all ready for you to use in your project.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/mt595751.aspx

Update: The new name of the file is .v8flags.{version}.{md5-hash-of-username}.json.