A Lightweight gRPC-Compatible Implementation for Sidecars
summary
Sidecar is a tiny Go library that implements the gRPC wire protocol directly on the Go standard library HTTP/2 stack, uses Go generics, and deliberately has no external dependencies. It powers the IO controller that runs Envoy as child process and controls it via XDS so apps offload TLS, cert management, authz, TCP proxying and traffic recording to the sidecar. Example repos include a simple echo service and the route‑guide API; claim: almost no generated gRPC code beyond protobuf and far less per‑language update burden.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Introduction and welcome
- 1:06gRPC and proxyless service mesh
- 3:36Introducing Sidecar for sidecars
- 6:30Sidecar library demo and code
- 8:57Why reduce complexity in software
- 11:48Complexity as a moat and its costs
- 14:35Total cost of XDS and complexity
- 16:21Govern dependencies and communication
- 18:07Prioritize interfaces over implementations
- 18:51Call to action and closing
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