create-react-app-zero VS unik

https://github.com/jsebrech/create-react-app-zero

No build frontend dev is a thing, although obscure.

Preact has a no build path in their documentation: https://preactjs.com/guide/v10/getting-started/#no-build-too...

And here’s my no build react setup: https://github.com/jsebrech/create-react-app-zero

Not really the thing you’re looking for, but for those looking for a toolless approach static web apps are a possibility. Host a folder on github pages, put an index.html file in there, start coding.

Plugging my own repo: https://github.com/jsebrech/create-react-app-zero

It is a version of create react app that works in that way, no build tools needed, only a static web server for local development.

For example, I made a version of create react app that requires zero build tools and IMHO doesn't concede too much in developer experience. To be fair, I am not using this myself professionally, but as a proof of concept I think it's pretty interesting to see what's possible. https://github.com/jsebrech/create-react-app-zero

I have been in professional web development since 2004 and I mostly agree with the author that there are massive amounts of groupthink going on. "Modern" web development has standardized in tool stacks which are insanely complicated, far beyond anything that is warranted in most cases. We have forgotten how to make simple things in simple ways.

At a minimum you need node, npm, webpack, babel, an spa framework, a frontend router, a css transpiler, a css framework, a test runner, a testing functions library, and a bunch of smaller things, and that's just what is "needed" to build a static website with a bit of interaction. We're not even talking about the dockerized insanity that happens as soon as you want to slide an API under that beast.

I understand why every piece is there, I was there when they arrived on the scene, I understand what problem they solve. What I don't understand is why as a group web developers have decided this is the only way to solve the problem of web development. What we don't have are simpler web stacks. Why do we need npm or babel at all to make a simple web frontend? Modern browsers are good enough that with the right tooling we don't need build pipelines or package managers. Similar arguments can be made for the server-side parts.

Anyway, here's my own two cents to a simpler web dev stack: a version of create react app that is entirely self-contained and has no build steps. https://github.com/jsebrech/create-react-app-zero

And on that note, I just found this list of UniKernel projects:

http://unikernel.org/projects/

I have especially had hopes for the UniK [1] project, as it was/is written in Go AFAIK. I see now it incorporates work from the Mirage project as well. Not sure what is the status of this project anymore though.

[1] https://github.com/solo-io/unik

Wow, just now seeing this topic. I work for a cloud company hosted in AWS. We started out, Netflix/Spotify style microservices. We were all on ec2 images generate by packer (and later with AWS Image Factory). When Docker hit, we kicked the tires but never did anything with it beyond using it for running unit tests, and later, infrastructure tests. 5 years ago, during a hackathon, our little group began experimenting with Unikernels, or library operating systems. Interestingly enough, these Unikernels were all stripped down BSD kernels. OSv is FreeBSD based, and Rumprun is NetBSD based. Services running in EC2 on Unikernels would spin up and start sending and receiving traffic before the AWS EC2 healthchecks completed. They are blazing fast! Only problem in 2017, was the tooling. It would have taken too much effort to use Unikernals with our infrastructure. As soon as they start making Unikernels that can run Java bytecode like native code, the fate of containerization will be sealed, IMO. We could get basic JVM webservers running on OSv, but not Cassandra, not Kafka, not yet. OSv now runs on Firecracker, but I have not tried it out, yet. Some links if you are interested: OSv: https://osv.io Rumprun: https://github.com/rumpkernel/rumprun We used this tooling during the Hackathon, but doesn't look like it has been touched in 3 years: https://github.com/solo-io/unik Unikraft Unikernel Dev kit: https://unikraft.org/ And don't forget Firecracker running in Kubernetes https://www.weave.works/oss/firekube/ And of course, being a FreeBSD subreddit, let's not forget FreeBSD on Firecracker https://www.daemonology.net/blog/2022-10-18-FreeBSD-Firecracker.html

Crazy idea that I'm sure isn't an original thought: instead of adapting the languages to deal with abstracting the idiosyncrasies of each OS, change the OSes to expose a universal API to make everything else lighter.

I guess that's also kinda Docker or QEMU or V8, but also https://github.com/solo-io/unik if you think about it differently.

In other words: hey, Lisp Machines were an excellent idea back then, but they still are. Maybe someday we'll have a V8 co-processor. More fun reading: https://lobste.rs/s/2poahh/what_i_could_not_undiscover_about

The HN conversations around unikernels suggest that they're not ready for production yet [0] but feel free to set that record straight.

In the meantime, a handful of organisations/individuals seem to be working on becoming "Docker for unikernels". That's probably an unfair description, but they're aiming to produce tools for building and managing unikernels: Unikraft [1], NanoVMs/Nanos [2], Unik [3]. Other orgs are producing unikernel-based OSs and VMs [4].

What is your toolset for building and managing unikernels? What have you learned?

Bonus question: is Unik dead? [5]

[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=unikernel&sort=byPopularity&type=story

[1] https://unikraft.org/

[2] https://github.com/nanovms/nanos

[3] https://github.com/solo-io/unik/

[4] http://unikernel.org/projects/

[5] https://github.com/solo-io/unik/issues/172

UniK will compile and deploy its own 30 MB unikernel. This unikernel is the Unik Instance Listener. The Instance Listener uses udp broadcast to detect (the IP address) and bootstrap instances running on Virtualbox.