---
title: "Ultimate (Rust)"
tagline: "Microservices"
language: "Rust"
license: "MIT"
since: "2020"
canonical: "https://xraph.com/work/ultimate"
---

# Ultimate (Rust)

A first attempt at a microservice framework in Rust. I stopped after about a year: the ergonomics I wanted needed language features that were not there yet, and the type signatures had stopped being readable by the people the framework was for.

## Install

```bash
cargo add ultimate
```

## What it is

The first attempt at a microservice framework in Rust, from 2020. Unmaintained after about a year.

It ran into the same wall North did a year later, without North's better instincts about lifecycle. I wanted framework ergonomics from a language that in 2020 expressed the generic-to-concrete boundary entirely in the type signature, and the result was code only I could read.

North was the second attempt. Forge, in Go, was the third and the one that stuck. Neither Rust framework was wasted. The model of lifecycle as a graph and the convention that errors carry the operation both came from here.

---

*Unpublished draft. Not peer reviewed and not submitted to a venue.*


## Anatomy

- **Services**: The Rust take on the Ultimate Backend layout.

## Constraints and trade-offs

- (known gap) Superseded by North, which took the parts that worked.