Rari – Rust-powered React framework

You're right about the messaging being confusing, I've been writing everything solo, so I'm definitely open to PRs that help with the copy. To clarify: "Rust-powered" refers to the server runtime itself, not just the bundler. The actual HTTP server, RSC renderer, and routing are all written in Rust (using an embedded V8 engine to execute your React components). It's not just Rolldown doing the bundling.

On the npm integration point: what I should have said is that rari's Rust runtime handles traditional node_modules resolution (require/import from node_modules), which is actually pretty rare for Rust-based JS runtimes. Deno, for example, uses npm specifiers instead of node_modules.

Great feedback on the tagline too. "Zero to RSC in minutes" is way clearer than what we have now. The codebase is definitely ahead of the docs, I've been focused on getting the runtime solid first, but clearly need to catch the documentation up.

Thanks for taking the time to dig in and give constructive feedback. This is exactly the kind of input that helps make it better.

agree about the messaging, and i think this is actually the make or break problem for any new framework at this point. the react ecosystem has so many options that developers are numb to "another react framework" announcements.

the real pitch buried in the confusing docs is: same react code you already know, but running on a rust server instead of node. that's actually compelling because it's additive, not a rewrite. but it took reading the HN comments to understand that, which is exactly the problem.

fwiw the "zero to RSC in minutes" tagline the author mentioned below would've gotten me to click the docs immediately. most of us just want to ship something without a three day yak shave through webpack/vite/turbopack configuration.

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Reacts added some poor abstractions over the last decade. Looking at you hooks and effects.

But its far from the worst.

It was the first framework to put together JSX, a functional way of defining components and simplifying state. This was a monumental improvement. As a result they earned mass adoption.

As a result its the framework that now has a community moat that is not going to crumble until someone else can break ground in the way they did.

Sure, some of these could be considered "better" but they're all better due to incremental improvements for Frontend Engineering.

None of which are substantial enough to unseat the king

> React is the literal worst of all the modern JavaScript frameworks and yet that's what everybody insists on using.

That's rather amusing. "Am I wrong? No it's the rest of the world!"

How are these other frameworks so far ahead? I've used a couple of frameworks and React has been the easiest from the big ones to wrap my head around.

I am a react developer. For past few months I am working in vue and I Just dont see any benefits

Totally agree.

It can be made better if you write it using non standard patterns - but the community is so dogmatic you'll get laughed out of the room.

All of my personal react projects use the MVC/MVVM architecture and are so much easier to work with

    export class AppViewModel {
      @rx accessor message = new TextField()
    }

    export function App() {
      const vm = useViewModel(AppViewModel)

      return <div>
        <p>{vm.message.value}</p>
        <input 
          onChange={vm.message.fromEvent} 
          value={vm.message.value} />
      <div>
    }

Makes it vue/angular/svelte-like, but unlike Vue/Angular/Svelte, you pick the version of TypeScript, the tools and don't need brittle plugins for your IDE to work with it.

As a Svelte developer working with React at $DAYJOB I must say it is the most horrific kludge of terrible abstractions I’ve ever had to suffer through in my life. The sheer number of hoops you have to jump through to do literally anything is comically absurd, and even the nicest way of doing things is a dumpster fire of bad programming patterns. The worst part is, React devs are blind to just how much of their day is spent solving problems that are created solely by React itself, unrelated to any business logic or actual value.

One day my dream is to delete 75% of the code, sprinkle some svelte into the business logic, and be left with a strictly superior, more performant version of the platform.

I hear you my brother. Days i had to write react were the worst i had to endure

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Thanks for sharing Leptos! I'm actually a fan of it too, it's a great framework for those who want to build full-stack apps in Rust.

That said, rari takes a different approach. It's not a pure Rust framework. It's a React Server Components framework that happens to be powered by a Rust runtime. The goal is to abstract away Rust's complexity entirely so JavaScript/TypeScript developers can build high-performance React apps without needing to learn Rust.

Very nice, I think a Rust server using a WebSocket to send MorphDOM diffs to the browser would be very well received.

Thank you, came to comments to find out what it is. Now I can go back to site and see what it is about.

Thanks again.

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"I guide others to a treasure I cannot possess"

Not like ReasonML, you still write normal React/TypeScript.

The Rust part is the server runtime. Instead of Node.js running your React Server Components, rari uses a Rust server with an embedded V8 engine. Same React code, different server underneath.

You write React → Rust server executes it → better performance than Node-based alternatives.

I forgot all about Reason…

Nice project, thank you for working on it. I was trying to figure out the architecture, and I understand that it runs a Deno VM to execute JS on the backend?

I was working on something similar, but for JVM backends [1]. And it seems there are a lot to learn from your project. For example, I'm using GraalVM that executes JS on the server. But I have to compile JS to WebAssembly because otherwise it produces a lot integration issues on the backend. Do you do the same?

[1] https://github.com/emeraldpay/double-view

Thank you, that's very kind! The name actually comes from "Runtime Accelerated Rendering Infrastructure" (RARI), but I love the Ferrari connection, it definitely fits the performance theme.

The inspiration was pretty straightforward: I wanted to build something for myself that was as performant as I could make it. I'd been using Rust a lot more in my day-to-day work and wanted to see if I could bring those performance benefits to React development without forcing JS devs to write Rust. The goal was to abstract away the complexity of Rust but still deliver the same benefits.

Congrats on shipping your project! What did you build?

Thats not good advertising for raris Performance claims.

Thanks twin!