[1.0] Moving away from JavaScript implementation

[thesayyn]

What is happening with Rust implementation

In summary, protoc-gen-ts continues to generate TypeScript code from proto files. However, there has been a shift from TypeScript to Rust in the project. This change is explained in more detail in the accompanying issue for the switch, citing reasons for the transition.

Implementation of protoc-gen-ts in JavaScript

• javascript was hard to maintain and test due to slowness of tsc
• the typescript package a peer dependency of protoc-gen-ts which broke the plugin if a wrong version was used. See npm package needs publishing to include fix for typescript >= 5 #225 It fails on Windows #86
• generation speed of protoc-gen-ts was affected by NodeJS runtime performance.
• depending on the typescript ast limited us is number of ways
• it was impossible to get concurrency into the plugin.
• javascript implementation did not pass the protobuf conformance tests.
• typescript wasn't truly type safe

Implementation of protoc-gen-ts in Rust

• concurrency built into the plugin
• utilizing swc/ast APIs instead of tsc/ast APIs.
• blazingly fast and easy to test
• successfully passes conformance tests
• truly type safe
• capable of emitting both JS and TS thanks to swc.
• eliminated whole class of issues that caused by NodeJS

Note

the plugin written is javascript is still the latest version published in npm, and it will stay that way for a while to avoid breaking people's code.
you can try out the protoc-gen-ts written in rust by running npm install @thesayyn/protoc-gen-ts@0.0.0-7a6a547

Caution

However, the protoc-gen-ts using Rust as its programming language should not affect the users, they will continue installing the plugin protoc-gen-ts.
But beware that protoc-gen-ts switching to Rust changed the emitted code in number of ways, please try the new plugin and report the issues back.

[thesayyn]

Rolling releases of protoc-gen-ts with Rust can be found here: https://github.com/thesayyn/protoc-gen-ts/pkgs/npm/protoc-gen-ts

[sanyatuning]

Hi! Can I use this without npm and node?

[thesayyn]

Yes, you should be able to, however, we don't have prebuilt binaries available anywhere, so you'd have clone and compile using cargo.

[loeffel-io]

hey @thesayyn,

is this a replacement for protoc-gen-js which is compatible with the protoc-gen-grpc-web plugin or a full replacement for protoc-gen-js and protoc-gen-grpc-web?

protoc order.proto \                                                                                                                                             
+  --ts_out=import_style=...:. \ 
-  --js_out=import_style=...:. \ 
  --grpc-web_out=import_style=typescript,mode=grpcweb:.