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Another common reason to decide against using an existing component is when it doesn't satisfy your requirements. For this project, I needed to prioritize the performance of the web server, and so I knew I needed an HTTP framework that performed well across a number of benchmarks, but I also needed some unusual capabilities such as being able to swap out the router in real-time. In the end, I decided on a hybrid approach for the web server, choosing to build a custom framework around the well-loved httprouter, which granted the majority of what I needed, and had some extremely well thought-out integration points that made it easy for me to build on top of it. In the case of the message bus, I also had a requirement of decentralization, which the majority of available projects are not.
My open source focus for this year is building Atmo, and there is one aspect of the process that I would like to highlight. Since early 2020 I knew roughly what I wanted to build. The specifics of that thing changed over time, but the core idea of a server-side WebAssembly platform was consistent all throughout the year. I didn't write a single line of code for Atmo until late October, even though that was what I wanted to build the entire time. I want to talk about why.
In the end, a combination of those factors led me to build the three main components of Atmo rather than use something off the shelf. Choosing to build the web server framework caused me to build Vektor. The need for a highly custom scheduler caused me to build Hive. The need for a dependency-free and decentralized message bus with tight integration with Hive caused me to build Grav. Some people may call this yak shaving, but I believe it was fundamental to building Atmo.
If you want to learn more about Suborbital, Atmo, Vektor, Hive, and Grav, head over to the Suborbital website, and sign up for the mailing list for occasional updates. You can reach out to me on Twitter or reach out via the Suborbital discussion forum