Rules of this repo (until 1.0.0)

• no tests
• no documentation
• no distractions
• no automation
• no sidetracking
• no quality control
• no publishing
• no maintenance
• no order
• no system
• no organization
• no releases
• no discussions
• no linting
• no thinking
• NO PERFECTIONISM!!!!
• no restrictions
• no looking at the source code
• no ⭐️ing
• no rules
• and nothing else except this repo

Goodies, saves, inspiration and other random links

1. https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/moby/buildkit/client/llb
2. https://github.com/dagger/dagger
3. grpc/grpc-node#2038
4. https://testcontainers.com/

TODO

1. research into vtproto generation?
2. write decorator to apply to all functions, that will save all its inputs and outputs into a global registry, for later inspection
3. attempt to generate a build from single inlined tree shaken script
4. maybe take some code to generate ts types from schema and back stored in Effect-TS/language-service
5. Importer from Dockerfiles and to dockerfiles
6. Package with scraped info from Dockerhub such as container names

Selling points

1. JS -- top used language, TS - 5th most popular
2. Effect.ts -- pure functions for reproducability
3. Support for dynamic code parametrization instead of templating yamls with unreliable, untraceable ${}
4. Better observability and tracing globally what teams need help with docker more than other and how build times change over time.
5. Dockerfile components reuse and shared parametrized configs.
6. Modules, packages, and inheritance for LLBs
7. Much better UX with much better autocomplete (in-IDE autocomplete for secrets names, or build args, provided by the type-system)
8. Show the world of buildkit and Docker for frontenders
9. TypeScript has C-style syntax and can be more easily understood by Java devs, than something closest to buildkit -- Go. There's no Java buildkit frontends anyway.
10. R&D. Experience I get from writing this implementation can be applied to solve problems for a company. We need experiments before doing big stuff!
11. Why TypeScript for Infrastructure?
12. Cloud development kit is cool and gaining popularity.
13. targets, that can't be used from outside with the help of ESM
14. ability to import from other Dockerfiles

Notes

1. gogo/proto deprecated: moby/buildkit#3119
2. there's nothing in Effect.ts codebase about protobuf or gRPC. Only MsgPack, which is irrelevant
3. important thing is to somehow be aware of every cacheable shit in existence, so that we can work with artifacts based on their cache. We need to store and calculate hashes.
4. Don't forget to disable telemetry if any would be present in projects.
5. Strictly follow rules of License of the project chosen as a basis.
6. Use @generated field from jsdoc

Ecosystem of TS/JS generation from protobuf

Available solutions related to generation of JS/TS (at 21 may 2025). Testing results provided by bufbuild/protobuf-conformance

NPM	Last published some time ago	Tests required	Tests optional	TS	GitHub	Stars	Repo N years old	Comment
@bufbuild/protobuf	8 days	100%	100%	✅	bufbuild/protobuf-es	1.3k	3	This package provides the runtime library for the @bufbuild/protoc-gen-es code generator plugin.
@bufbuild/protoc-gen-es	8 days	100%	100%	✅	bufbuild/protobuf-es	1.3k	3	Standard protoc plugin.
@bufbuild/protoplugin	8 days	100%	100%	✅	bufbuild/protobuf-es	1.3k	3	Framework to create TS generation plugins. Recommended even by creator of @protobuf-ts/plugin.
@protobuf-ts/plugin	19 days	99.9%	99.9%	✅	timostamm/protobuf-ts	1.2k	5	Standard protoc plugin.
@protobuf-ts/runtime	19 days	99.9%	99.9%	✅	timostamm/protobuf-ts	1.2k	5	This package provides the runtime library for the @protobuf-ts/plugin code generator plugin.

Bad decision to use

NPM	Last published some time ago	Tests required	Tests optional	TS	GitHub	Stars	Repo N years old	Comment
@protobuf-ts/plugin-framework	19 days	99.9%	99.9%	✅	timostamm/protobuf-ts	1.2k	5	It's deprecated, the author recommends @bufbuild/protoplugin. Also author explained that it relies on an old version of Typescript, which is the reason to not use it as a base for my project.
ts-proto	2 months	65.1%	5.86%	✅	stephenh/ts-proto	2.4k	6	Cannot generate code for Protobuf Editions. Also has mediocre conformance and maintainer didn't care enough to setup a test suite for that conformance. Not very actively developed. Has unfixed reported bugs.
protoscript	3 months	46.2%	17.9%	✅	TateThurston/protoscript	71	3	Very young library (v0.0.23). Fails a significant amount of tests. Not very much activity present from the author lately. Cannot generate code for Protobuf Editions.
protobufjs	9 months	13.6%	12.5%	✅	protobufjs/protobuf.js	10.2k	9	Has poor tests results. Didn't have releases for a long time also. Author of ts-proto believes it's aging & stagnant, and migrated from it to @bufbuild/protobuf. Even though it can generate typescript, the whole repo is written in pure javascript and for that reason cannot be used as a base for my project.
protoc-gen-ts	2 years	20.8%	27.6%	✅	thesayyn/protoc-gen-ts	379	6	Haven't been publishing for a long time, doesn't pass conformance tests according to this. Also maintainer's quite busy and this project is not a priority for them right now. The version inside NPM is written in TS, however the maintainer was going to rewrite it to rust. This rust version is not finished. Won't be helpful because I don't know Rust.
google-protobuf	10 months	69.4%	53.2%	❌	protocolbuffers/protobuf-javascript	419	10	Does not support ESM. Doesn't support Typescript generation. Written purely in javascript and for that reason cannot be used as a base for my project
protons	1 day			✅	ipfs/protons	35	11	Too limited in functionality, for example doesn't support oneOf. proto3 semantics only
@sisyphus.js/compiler	2 years			✅	ButterCam/sisyphus.js	22	3	Haven't been released for a long time. Not maintained. Written in non-English, which makes it difficult to understand.
pbjs	5 years			✅	evanw/pbjs	95	9	Not maintained and not production ready (at v0.0.14)
pbf	10 months			❌	pbf	826	12	Very low level library. Written in pure JS. Generates only JS.
ts-protoc-gen	4 years			❌	improbable-eng/ts-protoc-gen	1.4k	8	Basically unmaintained and didn't have releases for a very long time. Plus it generates only .d.ts declarations instead of usual typescript, which makes it a bad candidate for a base of my project. Bad ES6 support.

Irrelevant to the problem or wont be helpful

NPM	Last published some time ago	Tests required	Tests optional	TS	GitHub	Stars	Repo N years old	Comment
@connectrpc/connect	3 months			✅	connectrpc/connect-es	1.5k	3	This is not a thing to generate typescript based on .proto schema, which makes it irrelevant to my project. It generates RPC clients and uses @bufbuild/protoc-gen-es for that.
@connectrpc/connect-node	3 months			✅	connectrpc/connect-es	1.5k	3	This is not a thing to generate typescript based on .proto schema, which makes it irrelevant to my project. It generates RPC clients and uses @bufbuild/protoc-gen-es for that.
protoc-gen-js	4 months			❌	yinzara/protoc-gen-js	6	6	It's packaged protocolbuffers/protobuf-javascript protoc plugin binary. It's purely a wrapper. There's nothing to base my project on.
@bufbuild/buf	8 days			❌	bufbuild/buf	9.9k	6	It's only a CLI, that's also written in go. It can call other TS generation plugins, but not a plugin itself, which makes it irrelevant to my problem.
				❌	tmc/grpcutil/protoc-gen-tstypes	50	9	Generates only .d.ts declarations, written in Go, wasn't updated for a long time.
protobuf.js	11 years			❌	nlf/protobuf.js	24	13	Very old and very dead.
protobuf	8 years			❌	chrisdew/protobuf	231	14	Very old and very dead.
protocol-buffers	3 years			❌	mafintosh/protocol-buffers	762	11	Very old and very dead.

Plan

Done

1. analyze other existing libraries for generating typescript from .proto, to choose a better basis.

Potential tasks, not required to an immediate success of th project

1. PR to ts-proto to enable tree-shaking?
2. maybe implement something like this to generate protobuf schema from Effect RPC declarations?
3. make UI visualizations like I wanted for my smarthouse, but for entities representing dockerfiles, so that nodes have parametrized inputs representing build args, one of which is FROM field
4. GUI to inspect and create LLB of buildkit
5. registry for LLBs
6. Research selling points of infrastructure as code
7. Write a letter to this dude?
8. maybe add my implementation later to grpc-ecosystem/awesome-grpc
9. vscode plugin to highlight pieces of Bash code inside those container definition classes