Dear Dubbo Developers and Mentors, My name is Sunoj Ragiri, and I am a Computer Science student writing to formally submit my proposal for GSoC 2026: *Apache Dubbo — Lightweight Refactoring*.
After conducting an in-depth study of the Dubbo 3.3 codebase, I have identified a critical "core tension" where the framework's organic growth into 99+ Maven modules has led to significant dependency bloat. Currently, even a simple RPC consumer pulls in approximately 15 MB of shaded JARs and over 100 transitive artifacts, including 6 metrics modules and Prometheus integrations as hard compile-scope dependencies. *Project Overview* My project aims to transform Dubbo into a truly lightweight, cloud-native framework through a systematic refactoring of the dependency graph. Key objectives include: - *Decoupling Observability*: Moving metrics and tracing from compile-scope to optional dependencies using a new MetricsBridge SPI in dubbo-common. - *Lazy Initialization*: Deferring non-critical startup work, such as TypeDefinitionBuilder and MetricsReporterFactory, from eager bootstrap to first-use loading. - *dubbo-minimal Profile*: Creating a new distribution module that delivers core RPC functionality in under 5 MB with fewer than 30 dependencies. - *Performance Benchmarking*: Providing quantitative proof of improvements in JAR size, startup time, and memory footprint. *Technical Strategy* I plan to leverage Dubbo’s existing ExtensionLoader and the @Activate(onClass = "...") annotation. This allows us to move coupling from compile-time hard dependencies to runtime SPI discovery, ensuring that observability features only activate if the relevant JARs are present on the classpath. *Timeline & Availability* I have outlined a detailed 13-week execution plan, starting with a comprehensive dependency graph analysis and ending with the final dubbo-minimal artifact and architecture documentation. I am available to contribute approximately 29 hours per week throughout the coding period. You can review my full proposal here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_SKEgxDNwmFYgwt7JJbMaOSeuKm14hPR/view?usp=sharing I would greatly appreciate any feedback or guidance from the community regarding this proposal. Best regards, Sunoj Ragiri GitHub: sun-9545sunoj <https://github.com/sun-9545sunoj>
