Rari – Rust-powered React framework (rari.build)

69 points by bvanvugt 3 hours ago

mpeg 2 hours ago

ok so I actually like this, but the description and documentation in general are terrible

"rust-powered" meaning it uses rolldown to bundle the javascript, that's fine, but it's a weird thing to highlight, it's confusing for people that aren't super familiar with vite and might think this is a rust framework

from the docs "one of rari's superpowers is seamless NPM package integration" this makes me think the docs are LLM-written... npm package integration, like every other javascript library.

now, the good: there's very few simple frameworks for react (react router and tanstack) and I think the simplicity here on going from an empty project to RSCs is absolutely great, and should be the tagline

I was also happily surprised at how mature the codebase is in comparison to the docs, the vite plugin actually supports a lot of the options I would have expected to see, they're just not documented yet

edit: I realised after digging a bit deeper this actually does have a rust runtime that runs the js, that was not very clear... is this separate from the framework or does the framework only run in the rust runtime? eg can it run on node?

skiniks 2 hours ago

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.

lionkor an hour ago

V8 is C++, so why isn't it "C++ powered"?

skiniks an hour ago

koakuma-chan an hour ago

mpeg 2 hours ago

Yeah I wrote my comment initially thinking it was just rolldown being used, so the "rust-powered" was confusing, I think the tagline is actually ok now that I know this, but really you're doing two things here

1/ an alternative framework for RSCs similar to nextjs, tanstack or react router

2/ a rust runtime for javascript, similar to node, deno or bun (except maybe not as general purpose)

skiniks an hour ago

uriahlight an hour ago

It's like beating a dead horse. React is the literal worst of all the modern JavaScript frameworks and yet that's what everybody insists on using. Vue is light years ahead of it (and will be even further ahead when the new Vapor mode is released in 3.6). Svelte is ahead. Solid is ahead. Heck, even Marko is ahead.

apatheticonion 3 minutes ago

Totally agree.

It can be made better if you write it using non standard patterns - but the community is dogmatic so 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.

bnchrch 32 minutes ago

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

profstasiak 41 minutes ago

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

mden 29 minutes ago

> 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.

written-beyond 17 minutes ago

I never "learned" react because the "create react app" would literally never install for me in the early days. There were literally so many dependencies I never got it to build as a novice, I tried svelte everything worked and I got to spend that time building.

I can only speak for Svelte, in Svelte 3/4 it was so dead simple that I built my first basic webapp with 0 javascript, css or html experience in 3 days.

By week 2 I was trying out different UI libraries and css frameworks, that part was super rough though, back then lots of compat issues.

cantalopes 12 minutes ago

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

dev_l1x_be 3 hours ago

> React Server Components framework powered by a Rust runtime.

If anybody is wondering.

desireco42 an hour ago

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.

satvikpendem 3 hours ago

Is this like ReasonML and its React-Reason framework?

I don't really understand how it works, what part is Rust powered, is it reimplementing the JS engine in Rust?

skiniks 2 hours ago

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.

mpeg 2 hours ago

wait so it actually has a rust runtime? that's not documented in the site so I had assumed the rust part was simply rolldown

it would be interesting to see a performance comparison to node and bun

Erenay09 2 hours ago

laurencerowe 2 hours ago

How is this different than running that same React code in deno whose HTTP server is also written in Rust?

skiniks 2 hours ago

bsimpson 2 hours ago

I forgot all about Reason…

moritzwarhier 10 minutes ago

I once (2022 I think) took a short ReasonML course with hands-on and while it was only superficial, I remember how much it increased the appeal of pattern matching and immutability for me... without being a true FP head or anything.

sebringj an hour ago

this looks neat and reminds me of "Ferrari" for fast and combines "react" so it's a great name. Was there a specific use case for this that inspired you? I would imagine some massive existing heavy thing that you plugged in to fix to save it? I just put my open source thing out so it's nice to see some traction on yours, rooting for you.

skiniks an hour ago

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?

sebringj an hour ago

ah gotcha... i was picturing like this massive web page that was dog slow that you just like made mad fast... but that's cool though. I'll run it.

I built autonomo on github, it's this mcp you plugin to your whatever ai editor and it drives the app/web/desktop whatever thing and validates it actually runs and works... keep building homie!

skiniks 3 hours ago

Author here! Should be all good now, turns out the rate limiter was a bit overzealous

splix 2 hours ago

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

skiniks an hour ago

Thanks for checking it out! rari uses V8 (via deno_core bindings) embedded directly in the Rust runtime, not a full Deno VM. We execute JavaScript directly on V8 without compiling to WebAssembly.

The key is that deno_core provides clean Rust bindings to V8's C++ API, which lets us run JS/TypeScript with minimal overhead. We handle module resolution, imports, and the React rendering pipeline all in Rust, then execute the actual component code in V8. No WASM compilation step needed.

Your JVM project looks cool! The GraalVM → WASM approach makes sense for JVM integration. We avoid those integration issues by keeping everything in the Rust/V8 ecosystem. The tradeoff is we're tied to V8, but we get native performance and direct access to V8's features.

dbacar 2 hours ago

"Rust-Powered Performance

Native speed with Rust compilation for blazing-fast builds and runtime"

It seems only Rust itself compiles slow while helping others brag about it :).

zadikian an hour ago

"I guide others to a treasure I cannot possess"

mattrighetti 3 hours ago

Website has been hugged

tuhgdetzhh 3 hours ago

Thats not good advertising for raris Performance claims.

skiniks 3 hours ago

Fair point! To be clear: rari handled the traffic perfectly fine - the issue was an overly defensive rate limiter I had configured (and it was grouping proxy traffic incorrectly). The framework itself was cruising, I just had the safety rails set too tight. Adjusted now and it's handling the load as expected!

choiway an hour ago

Naming so lit

xlmnxp 3 hours ago

Get started but not working

rtcode_io 2 hours ago

Two cancers combined!