RobustMQ: Glad to Have the Chance to Show You Something Different
RobustMQ is a next-generation high-performance multi-protocol message queue built with Rust. Our vision is to become the next-generation cloud-native and AI-native messaging infrastructure. It is not simply "yet another message queue" — rather, it represents a rethink and redesign of message queues for the AI era and cloud-native requirements.
RobustMQ wrote its first line of code in October 2023. This is not a commercial project, and we have no plans in that direction. Everyone has their own job and is busy. We came together out of interest in Rust and in technology. Unfortunately, two years later, we still don't have an official release. We originally expected to ship version 0.2.0 in October — our first RELEASE, with full MQTT protocol support.
In the first year, it was just a personal Rust learning project. Though it's been on GitHub the whole time, it really made its formal debut at Rust Conf China 2024 in September 2024. From last September to today, another year has passed. So much has happened in that year — we're glad we stuck with it.
We created our WeChat public account on August 29 this year, just over two weeks ago. That day, on a whim, we set it up. That day I was the only one following the account — just one follower ~~ hahaha. We thought we'd try it out, use the writing process to summarize what we've built over these two years, explain what we want to do, what we're doing, what we want to achieve, and how we think about it.
We didn't expect that after posting two articles, we'd attract so much attention — so many people following our project and joining our development group. People have raised many questions and doubts on the public account and in the group. Suddenly we felt a lot of pressure, so we wanted to write this article to share our thoughts and answer everyone's questions.
Is This a Startup Project?
Many people ask. Our answer has always been: No. As our website says: "This is a community project driven by technical passion. The ultimate goal is to build an excellent message queue component and join the Apache Foundation. That would be pretty cool. Hahaha." Today, and in the future, that won't change.
What's the Difference vs. Mainstream and Emerging Message Queues?
People ask: It seems similar to Pulsar. What's the difference from Redpanda, NATS, IGGY? Kafka is amazing — can you do better? We've put some articles on our site explaining our vision, characteristics, and how we differ from other products — trying to clarify what we're doing, what we want to do, and what our strengths are.
Trust us — we know the message queue space very well. If you dig into our project and read our materials in detail, you'll naturally get the answer. The answer is: there are significant differences.
About Vision and Development Progress
The first impression people get is that we're making big claims. We think simply: we don't want to boast, we just want to build an All-in-One message queue that solves many problems. We believe the industry needs this. As for vision — we figure the bigger the better ~~ hahaha ~
Then they ask: What's the progress? Is it usable? Currently not for production — we've just completed core MQTT protocol development. We expect to release the first RobustMQ MQTT Release version in October. But the overall code structure and system architecture have gone through many rounds of refactoring and are now stable. Development progress should accelerate. No major refactors needed anymore.
Progress Seems Slow?
On why progress has been slow — we've actually been trying to slow ourselves down, to think about what to do, how to do it, and what shape it should take. We've been rewriting and refactoring our code to lay the foundation for multi-protocol compatibility and plugin-based storage, so we don't keep needing major refactors.
So we think people perceive slow progress for these reasons:
- Our developers all have day jobs and can't commit full-time
- We're short on people, mainly Rust and frontend developers
- We want a solid foundation, so we've been adjusting our architecture and code in the early phase
That said, we think our progress is okay. The overall architecture and code structure, MQTT protocol, CLI tools, and Dashboard are all taking shape. We have a website, documentation, and public account. We especially welcome anyone who wants to participate — whether you're a beginner or an expert, if you express willingness to join, we're very happy. We welcome anyone interested. Open arms ~
Can We Do It?
Hahaha — in 2023 we had no idea we'd get here. Last year we didn't know if we'd still be going today. Today we suddenly realized: we have 1200+ Stars, 60+ Contributors, a tech group with 300+ people, a public account, a comprehensive website and documentation. A lot of people are following us.
Infrastructure software is inherently boring and monotonous. But we'll say: we want to try. We think we can do it. How do you know if you don't try? Right?
What Are We Doing Next?
We want to meet a lot of people — a lot of people interested in us. Then keep our heads down and keep coding. And look forward to the day we have something really cool.
Glad to Have the Chance to Show You Something Different
We also want to say: we're really glad to have the chance to show you something different. We never want to贬低同类产品 — we just want to do our own thing. We're familiar with almost all Message Middleware in the industry and have drawn on many of their strengths, so you might find similarities. We're grateful to the whole open-source community, to our predecessors, to all the excellent work we've been able to reference and learn from.
Over these two years, we've found our vision and architecture constantly evolving. I believe today's vision and architecture won't be our endpoint.
Finally
We hope you'll give us some time and patience. We hope to stand on the shoulders of giants, look up at the sky, keep our heads down, work with安心, and build the best MQ Infra component.
Finally, although a lot has happened this year — sunshine, joy, freedom — we hope everyone is doing really, really well ~~~.