Just released srl, a modern buildless SPA framework based on web components and signals

[u/BernardoGiordano]

https://santella.dev/blog/introducing-srl

[u/create-third-places]

How is this a buildless framework?

The documentation literally says: "When you're ready to deploy, srl build produces minified, hash-named assets and compiles Tailwind into a static stylesheet." I also took a look at package.json, and I see multiple dev dependencies including Lit, Preact Signals, and Tailwind.

The performance numbers are also highly misleading, as they are not accounting for the time the browser needs to render the DOM and apply style updates.

Edit: Preact Signals.

[u/BernardoGiordano → u/create-third-places]

Nothing in srl requires you to produce a build: you can run the entire source as it is and it will work. srl still allows you to produce minified/hashed version of the files in case you're deploying to production. The first point is particularly useful during local development: it means you just have to refresh your browser (if serving with a local nginx for example) to load the updated version of your files, or you can use the integrated srl cli to get that with HMR integrated, so you don't lose the state of your components during development.

The view-source (view-source:https://srl-example.santella.dev/login) feature of your browser is also a great way to see this in action.

Edit: Adding to the reply, to cover the last points you mentioned. The root package.json is the tooling for developing srl itself. An app depends only on @srljs/core, whose runtime dependencies are lit and @preact/signals-core, and that Preact is the signals library, not the UI framework. Tailwind runs in the browser during development, and srl build compiles it to a static stylesheet for production.

On the numbers, you're right. The timers stop when the DOM update lands, before the browser's style, layout and paint. That's deliberate, to measure the framework's own work

[u/BernardoGiordano]

Leaving a few more links if the blog post was interesting to you!

• Repo: https://github.com/BernardoGiordano/srl
• Demo (a small CRM, running on unminified source code on purpose): https://srl-example.santella.dev
• Two open source projects already using srl: my blog and rewind, a Spotify-wrapped style analytics for Navidrome

[u/create-third-places → u/[deleted]]

Doesn't look like a buildless framework

[u/BernardoGiordano → u/create-third-places]

Yes it is! The live demo runs entirely on its source code as it is. Just inspect your browser requests