2024 In Review

1. serde

   1 207 10,759 8.0 Rust

   Serialization framework for Rust

   

   lack of finished solutions for serde (default values, partial initialization)

2. SaaSHub

   www.saashub.com sponsored

   SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives

   

3. gutenberg

   2 128 17,342 9.2 Rust

   A fast static site generator in a single binary with everything built-in. https://www.getzola.org

   

   Initially, I ran my blog only on Medium, but it's not comfortable to write text there – it's much easier to write and edit in the same editor where I write code (plus my editor has Copilot). Therefore, I decided to move my blog to a static page generator. As an engine, I chose Zola (Rust-based, simple, and fast); I also tried Astro, but it's too big and complex for such a simple task. Overall, Zola is good, but it lacks some filters in templating, not enough flexibility in file structure, and not all popular languages are supported in code highlighting.

4. llama.cpp

   3 1,070 123,686 10.0 C++

   LLM inference in C/C++

   

   As local runners, I used llama.cpp and https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx – the second one uses Mac resources better (checked through macmon), but new models come out a bit slower on it. Some people use ollama, but I didn't understand why, considering that it has an incompatible client with openai-client API and slower performance.

5. macmon

   4 6 1,807 8.0 Rust

   🦀🌡️ Real-time system monitor for Apple Silicon Macs (M1–M5). No sudo. TUI, JSON/Prometheus metrics server, and Rust library.

   

   As local runners, I used llama.cpp and https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx – the second one uses Mac resources better (checked through macmon), but new models come out a bit slower on it. Some people use ollama, but I didn't understand why, considering that it has an incompatible client with openai-client API and slower performance.

6. biome

   5 57 25,567 10.0 Rust

   A toolchain for web projects, aimed to provide functionalities to maintain them. Biome offers formatter and linter, usable via CLI and LSP.

   

   The main fail of the year in the NodeJS ecosystem is the update of ESLint from 8 -> 9 – completely incompatible API with all existing plugins, the configuration file became larger and more complex – it's not clear why the authors made this diversion. I also tried Binome as an alternative to ESLint / Prettier, but it's completely different and you need to redo a lot, and not everything you need is available at the moment, I continue to monitor this project.

7. ollama

   6 785 178,549 9.8 Go

   Get up and running with Kimi-K2.6, GLM-5.2, MiniMax, DeepSeek, gpt-oss, Qwen, Gemma and other models.

   

   As local runners, I used llama.cpp and https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx – the second one uses Mac resources better (checked through macmon), but new models come out a bit slower on it. Some people use ollama, but I didn't understand why, considering that it has an incompatible client with openai-client API and slower performance.

8. astro

   7 664 61,803 10.0 TypeScript

   The web framework for content-driven websites. ⭐️ Star to support our work!

   

   Initially, I ran my blog only on Medium, but it's not comfortable to write text there – it's much easier to write and edit in the same editor where I write code (plus my editor has Copilot). Therefore, I decided to move my blog to a static page generator. As an engine, I chose Zola (Rust-based, simple, and fast); I also tried Astro, but it's too big and complex for such a simple task. Overall, Zola is good, but it lacks some filters in templating, not enough flexibility in file structure, and not all popular languages are supported in code highlighting.

9. timewiz

   8 1 6 4.3 TypeScript

   Visual timezone board for comparing cities, spotting overlap, and picking sensible time windows.

   

   timewiz.cc (react, webapp) – a tool to find common working hours for distributed teams (an alternative to worldtimebuddy.com, I don't remember exactly why I made my own version). Score: fail.

10. ecloop

    9 2 60 7.9 C

    🔐💻 ecloop: A high-performance, CPU-optimized tool for computing public keys on the secp256k1 elliptic curve, with features for searching compressed & uncompressed public keys and customizable search parameters.

    

    ecloop (c, cli) – secp256k1 elliptic curve implementation for Apple chips. Mainly an educational project to understand cryptography, SIMD optimizations, etc. Added several standard use cases for finding Bitcoin keys by brute force, but mathematically this is pointless, so as I said earlier, this is more of an interesting educational project (and I wanted to publish a series of articles on cryptography, but didn't have time last year, I hope to do it this year). Some people use this project in hopes of finding something. I also had ideas to add Metal API support – but that takes a lot of time, so I switched to other projects. Score: okay.

11. ghstats

    10 6 184 6.9 Rust

    🤩📈 Self-hosted GitHub traffic analytics with long-term history, SQLite storage, and a tiny Docker image.

    

    ghstats (rust, axum, htmx, webapp) – a small self-hosted service that collects and saves GitHub repo statistics, has several built-in views and an API to retrieve all statistics. The project started well, but then kind of fizzled out in terms of issues and feature requests, most likely users are satisfied with the current functionality. I would like to add more visualizations, but I haven't had time for that yet. The main thing for now is that the statistics are collected and saved, so something can be done with this in the future. Technically, I like that the service consumes only 10 MB of RAM. Score: okay.

12. ogp

    11 1 11 3.5 Rust

    Open Graph Image Generator for Static Sites (by vladkens)

    

    ogp (rust, axum, api-service) – a small project for generating OGP articles preview as a service. Used in this blog (you can check by sending this article to your friends in a messenger or social network 😀). Worked with the SVG standard (I thought it was more adequate) and generating PNG from SVG. Score: more of fail.

13. compose-updater

    12 1 0 3.6 Python

    Discontinued Webhook-triggered Docker Compose updater that pulls fresh images and recreates services, with Amazon ECR support built in.

    

    compose-updater (python, api-service) – a project for updating the version of a docker image from CI in a closed infrastructure. I didn't find anything ready to solve this task. There is watchtower, but it's more about keeping up-to-date docker images, rather than updating a specific one, and also I couldn't run it with ECR repos – the author made a super minimalist image in which I couldn't enter through sh to debug. The second alternative is umputun/updater, but it's more about running different shell commands through a webhook. I chose Python because I didn't find a Rust crate for Docker API (most likely it exists, I just didn't understand which one is really good). Score: – (I didn't promote the project anywhere, I use it for my own purposes for now).

14. watchtower

    13 235 24,488 6.5 Go

    Discontinued A process for automating Docker container base image updates.

    

    compose-updater (python, api-service) – a project for updating the version of a docker image from CI in a closed infrastructure. I didn't find anything ready to solve this task. There is watchtower, but it's more about keeping up-to-date docker images, rather than updating a specific one, and also I couldn't run it with ECR repos – the author made a super minimalist image in which I couldn't enter through sh to debug. The second alternative is umputun/updater, but it's more about running different shell commands through a webhook. I chose Python because I didn't find a Rust crate for Docker API (most likely it exists, I just didn't understand which one is really good). Score: – (I didn't promote the project anywhere, I use it for my own purposes for now).

15. updater

    14 1 122 4.7 Go

    Simple web-hook based receiver executing things via HTTP request (by umputun)

    

    compose-updater (python, api-service) – a project for updating the version of a docker image from CI in a closed infrastructure. I didn't find anything ready to solve this task. There is watchtower, but it's more about keeping up-to-date docker images, rather than updating a specific one, and also I couldn't run it with ECR repos – the author made a super minimalist image in which I couldn't enter through sh to debug. The second alternative is umputun/updater, but it's more about running different shell commands through a webhook. I chose Python because I didn't find a Rust crate for Docker API (most likely it exists, I just didn't understand which one is really good). Score: – (I didn't promote the project anywhere, I use it for my own purposes for now).

16. twscrape

    15 2 2,676 8.1 Python

    Python library and CLI for X/Twitter scraping with multi-account rotation and built-in rate-limit handling.

    

    twscrape (python, lib) – a library for parsing data from X/Twitter. Mainly the project is in maintenance mode, I check its functionality every few months, and there have been no requests for new features.

17. apigen-ts

    16 3 54 6.0 TypeScript

    Generate a fully typed TypeScript fetch client from OpenAPI/Swagger in one file. Supports OpenAPI 2.0, 3.0, and 3.1.

    

    apigen-ts (typescript, lib) – a library for generating TypeScript client OpenAPI spec. I continue to use it in my projects; I also see that there are a small number of other users. My relevance has slightly decreased due to the NextJS/TRPC stack, but in other configurations (e.g. FastApi + React), it is still relevant, so use it. Periodically there are requests to fix something or add a feature.

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