# sofastack/sofa-bolt

SOFABolt is a lightweight, easy to use and high performance remoting framework based on Netty.

Repository: https://github.com/sofastack/sofa-bolt
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/sofa-bolt
Homepage: https://www.sofastack.tech/projects/sofa-bolt/
Language: Java
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: sofa-rpc, sofastack, netty, sofa-bolt, java
Last push: 2026-08-26T10:11:30+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 70/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 16, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3068, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 499, "gap_med": 117, "n_releases_24m": 2}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2503, forks 870 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:57.048108+00:00)

## What it is
SOFABolt is a lightweight, high-performance network remoting framework for Java built on Netty, developed by Ant Financial. It provides connection management, multiple invocation models (oneway, sync, future, callback), and a protocol framework for implementing custom private protocols, and powers SOFARPC and other middleware.

## Use cases
- build an rpc client and server in java
- implement a custom binary protocol over netty
- add reliable connection management with heartbeat and auto-reconnect
- remote procedure calls between microservices
- build messaging middleware communication layer
- avoid writing raw netty nio code for rpc

## When to choose
- you need a proven netty-based remoting layer for java middleware
- you want built-in rpc protocol with callback, sync, and oneway invocation
- you are building on the SOFAStack ecosystem such as SOFARPC

## When to avoid
- you need cross-language rpc with broad ecosystem support like gRPC
- your project is not on the JVM
- you prefer a higher-level service framework rather than a remoting library

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: rpc, networking, serialization, middleware
- domain: microservices, backend, developer-tools
- platform: jvm, cross-platform
- tags: netty, remoting, sofastack, custom-protocol, high-performance, java, messaging

## Member repositories
- sofastack/sofa-bolt (main) score 70

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:57.048108+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:26:46.804250+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/sofastack/sofa-bolt (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:57.048108+00:00, sha 5b84209ad494)
  - homepage: https://www.sofastack.tech/projects/sofa-bolt/ (fetched 2026-08-29T10:09:01.080569+00:00, sha 44136fa355b3)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.