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Rest
The OXC-powered TypeScript compiler that runs 2-3x faster than esbuild.
Rest
Rest is the TypeScript compiler and bundler for Code Editor Land. It replaces the traditional tsc + Node.js pipeline with OXC, a Rust-native parser and transformer that produces 100% compatible output at 2-3x esbuild speed.
The Problem
VS Code builds its TypeScript source with tsc running inside Node.js. The entire compile step carries the overhead of a JavaScript runtime: garbage collection pauses, JIT warmup, single-threaded type checking. A clean build of the VS Code workbench takes minutes.
Even modern alternatives like esbuild, while dramatically faster than tsc, still run inside a Go runtime with its own garbage collector and bridge overhead when interacting with JavaScript tooling.
How Rest Eliminates It
Rest is built on OXC (Oxidation Compiler), a Rust-native TypeScript parser and code generator. Parsing, transformation, and code emission all happen in native code with zero garbage collection pauses.
OXC handles TypeScript syntax stripping, JSX transformation, and module resolution natively. Rest wraps OXC with a plugin-routed architecture that feeds transformed output into esbuild for final bundling, combining OXC’s parsing speed with esbuild’s battle-tested code splitting.
The result: 2-3x faster than esbuild alone, and an order of magnitude faster than tsc.
What You Experience
Clean builds complete in seconds, not minutes. Incremental rebuilds during development are near-instant. The compile step disappears from your workflow. You save a file and see the result before your hand leaves the keyboard.
CI pipelines benefit equally. Build times drop, runner minutes shrink, and merge queues move faster.
Key Technologies
Rust, OXC, esbuild, Plugin-Routed Bundling, Zero-GC TypeScript Compilation.