Hi HN!

I'd love to seek your insights on a fullstack web framework that employs a different approach: no build.

It's not a new concept. The folks as Preact mentioned it: https://preactjs.com/guide/v10/no-build-workflows/

However, in the Web Framework market, I've yet to find many that support both "no build" and "SSR". There's always some sorts of "client mount" and "server mount" and either has (or both have) to go through a build (bundling) process.

With the build process, there comes additional maintenance efforts and cognitive load. I've enjoyed wrestling with tsconfig, webpack config, all sorts of presets and plugins countless times... When things work, they just work, but when we need sth a bit custom or unconventional, then we're almost always in for a tough ride. (or it's just me )

Not to say I'm against any existing build workflow. In fact I benefited a lot in the past from webpack, and i'm very positive about modern bundlers like Parcel 2, Turbopack, rspack, etc.

I just feel it'd be fair to save some slots for the "no build" route :)

To this end, I spent the last month working on a prototype of a TypeScript fullstack SSR web framework. It's compatible with Deno and Bun runtimes. I'd love to make it compatible with Node.js as well (at some point).

The framework registry page (https://jsr.io/@fullsoak/fullsoak) summarizes the motives expressed so far.

An example deployment is available at: https://fullsoak.onrender.com/app

The code behind the deployment above: https://github.com/fullsoak/bun-examples

PS: you may see Preact being used & mentioned everywhere but I'm positive that React is 100% supported as well (just drop-in & use). I just happened to choose Preact to experience it more for myself.

I look forward to your thoughts :) and learning if this might (or might not) be a feasible idea at scale. And perhaps, which future directions you would see this (or something like it) goes. Thank you much for any insight!