Remove livekit-runtime by 1egoman · Pull Request #1375 · livekit/rust-sdks

1egoman · 2026-08-28T17:21:19Z

Background

The livekit-runtime crate was introduced in ~2024 by the folks at zed so they could use livekit in zed, which wasn't using a tokio runtime (my understanding is, a completely custom runtime!). The general design patterns haven't really changed since then.

A few pain points that have been encountered recently touch on livekit-runtime:

The migration wasn't done completely, and there are quite a few tokio runtime specific calls which were missed (or introduced later inadvertently). One example I know of offhand is the tokio::fs usage in the send_file data stream method. These could be fixed piecemeal, but we'd need to extend the abstractions further to deal with a bunch of different async operations which is fairly burdensome.
Because of 1, today, the async and dispatcher features (what zed was using specifically) don't actually build on main properly 😞 .
We should be testing to ensure that all feature combinations build in ci, but in order to do this with the current design of livekit-runtime (which isn't super well encapsulated - higher level features in the livekit crate sometimes imply certain runtimes), it would be challenging. We'd have to effectively do a build for each platform x runtime x ssl configuration x any ad hoc features which is impractical.
async-std (which the async feature enables) has recently been deprecated in favor of smol, which we don't support today.

From what I can tell looking through zed's code, they seem to have since migrated from the custom runtime approach they were using to a more typical looking tokio backed approach. It also looks like they might be using a rust-sdks fork, not actually mainline. I've done a search across all of github, and the only places that dispatcher seems to be used is by stale zed forks, so I'm fairly confident this can be dropped with little to no consequence.

Summary

Given this context and socializing this decision with the client team, we have decided to drop support for non tokio async runtimes. livekit-runtime will be deprecated and all non tokio shim code will be removed. This will address all points above (fewer features making testing easier, no need to support async-std, and ci validates the crate will always compile on tokio) and lead to a much simpler to maintain project.

If we decide eventually that it's worth reintroducing this behavior, then #1369 would be a good place to start, along with taking some learnings from https://webrtc.rs/blog/2026/01/31/async-friendly-webrtc-architecture.html.

TODO

Publish a final livekit-runtime release marking it as deprecated.

github-actions · 2026-08-28T17:21:45Z

Changeset ✓

This PR includes a changeset covering all affected packages:

Package	Bump
`libwebrtc`	`minor`
`livekit`	`minor`
`livekit-api`	`minor`
`livekit-datatrack`	`minor`
`livekit-ffi`	`minor`
`livekit-net`	`minor`
`livekit-signaling`	`minor`
`livekit-token-source`	`minor`
`livekit-uniffi`	`minor`

1egoman · 2026-08-28T17:27:44Z

+# deprecated.
+signal-client        = ["dep:livekit-signaling"]
+signal-client-native = ["signal-client", "livekit-signaling/native"]
+
+services = ["access-token", "dep:livekit-region", "dep:reqwest", "dep:tokio", "tokio/time"]

-services-tokio = ["access-token", "dep:livekit-region", "dep:reqwest", "dep:tokio", "tokio/time", "dep:livekit-runtime", "livekit-runtime/tokio"]
-services-async = ["access-token", "dep:livekit-region", "dep:isahc", "dep:livekit-runtime", "livekit-runtime/async"]


Note to reviewers - there is a small breaking change here in a public crate. signal-client-tokio / signal-client-async / signal-client-dispatcher are no longer exposed, but these were never advertised publicly and acted as features that livekit used to bring in a subset of livekit-api prior to breaking out relevant bits of functionality into livekit-signaling.

1egoman · 2026-08-28T17:33:42Z

-async = ["livekit-signaling/native-async", "livekit-runtime/async"]
-tokio = ["livekit-signaling/native-tokio", "livekit-runtime/tokio"]
-dispatcher = ["livekit-signaling/native-dispatcher", "livekit-runtime/dispatcher"]


Note to reviewers - another small feature level change in livekit. async / dispatcher no longer exist and tokio was kept around as an alias for native as one probably implies the other in hte vast majority of uses (the big exception would be livekit-ffi / livekit-uniffi)

devin-ai-integration

🔍 Devin Review: 2 flags

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xianshijing-lk

lgtm

ladvoc

Generally looks good to me, been a while since I've reviewed a PR that isn't an addition! A few minor questions/suggestions:

I would consider this a minor breaking change since crate feature are being removed/renamed.
Remove "[...] however we plan to make the async executor runtime agnostic" from the top-level README.

1egoman · 2026-08-31T16:04:30Z

(I will wait until this is released and add a TODO item later to Publish a final livekit-runtime release marking it as deprecated)

@1egoman

> [!IMPORTANT] > Merging this pull request will create these releases # livekit-datatrack 0.1.15 (2026-09-08) ## Features - Removes livekit-runtime and converts this package to be tokio only again - #1375 (@1egoman) ## Fixes - Add data streams v2 to exposed uniffi interface - #1286 (@1egoman) - Add the `PASSTHROUGH` encoding preset and remove the unused `UpdateEgressRequest` from the generated protocol # livekit-uniffi 0.1.10 (2026-09-08) ## Features - Removes livekit-runtime and converts this package to be tokio only again - #1375 (@1egoman) ## Fixes - Add data streams v2 to exposed uniffi interface - #1286 (@1egoman) - Lower the Android UniFFI AAR minSdk from 24 to 21 - Add the `PASSTHROUGH` encoding preset and remove the unused `UpdateEgressRequest` from the generated protocol - Add `self_test_http_get` / `self_test_ws_echo` / `has_http_client` / `has_ws_client` UniFFI exports so foreign hosts can exercise the transport seam end-to-end. - Attach Dart/Flutter cdylib assets to releases and prepare livekit_uniffi for pub.dev publishing - Update Android's JNA dependency version to 5.19.1 to support 16KB page sizes # livekit-token-source 0.1.3 (2026-09-08) ## Features - Removes livekit-runtime and converts this package to be tokio only again - #1375 (@1egoman) ## Fixes - Add data streams v2 to exposed uniffi interface - #1286 (@1egoman) # livekit-protocol 0.7.13 (2026-09-08) ## Features - Add the `PASSTHROUGH` encoding preset and remove the unused `UpdateEgressRequest` from the generated protocol # livekit-common 0.1.3 (2026-09-08) ## Fixes - Add the `PASSTHROUGH` encoding preset and remove the unused `UpdateEgressRequest` from the generated protocol # livekit-signaling 0.1.1 (2026-09-08) ## Features - Removes livekit-runtime and converts this package to be tokio only again - #1375 (@1egoman) ## Fixes - Add data streams v2 to exposed uniffi interface - #1286 (@1egoman) ### Moves the signalling client into a new `livekit-signaling` crate. livekit-api re-exports it under the historical `livekit_api::signal_client` path, now marked deprecated: it is internal SDK API, and dependents should use livekit-signaling directly. livekit-api no longer depends on livekit-net. Also drops two dependencies that were declared but never used: `scopeguard` and `bytes`. # livekit 0.9.0 (2026-09-08) ## Breaking Changes - Removes livekit-runtime and converts this package to be tokio only again - #1375 (@1egoman) ## Fixes - Add data streams v2 to exposed uniffi interface - #1286 (@1egoman) - Add the `PASSTHROUGH` encoding preset and remove the unused `UpdateEgressRequest` from the generated protocol - Fix pre-encoded frame segfault on macOS - Handle capture of dmabuf using existing capture path - Add `self_test_http_get` / `self_test_ws_echo` / `has_http_client` / `has_ws_client` UniFFI exports so foreign hosts can exercise the transport seam end-to-end. ### Make AdmProxy worker-thread-affine: all platform ADM access now happens on the WebRTC worker thread, matching the ADM threading contract. - The platform ADM is now created lazily on the first PlatformAudio acquire on all platforms, so apps that never use platform audio never construct it. - Fixes Android platform recording delivering no audio: the audio transport was never registered on the lazily created ADM. - Fixes a shutdown race by keeping the runtime threads alive as long as Rust can reach the audio device controller. - Adds a `platform_audio` example exercising the PlatformAudio API and the worker-thread marshaling. ### Add agent guidance for detecting and preventing memory-lifecycle regressions in Rust, FFI, and native WebRTC code. ### Close peer connections before awaiting signal teardown `SessionInner::close` released the peer connections only after two awaits that can block indefinitely, so cancelling `close()` — for example by wrapping it in a timeout — left the transports open and their ICE UDP sockets bound for the lifetime of the process. Long-lived clients eventually exhausted their file descriptors. The transports are now closed before the first await, which makes the teardown safe to cancel. ### Moves the internal region-discovery cache into a new `livekit-region` crate. No public API or behaviour change. ### Moves the signalling client into a new `livekit-signaling` crate. livekit-api re-exports it under the historical `livekit_api::signal_client` path, now marked deprecated: it is internal SDK API, and dependents should use livekit-signaling directly. livekit-api no longer depends on livekit-net. Also drops two dependencies that were declared but never used: `scopeguard` and `bytes`. ### Fix CUDA and FFI resource cleanup during SDK shutdown. NVIDIA encoder and decoder factories now share a reference-counted CUDA context and destroy it when the final factory is dropped. FFI shutdown now releases leftover handles one at a time so nested `drop_handle` calls do not re-enter `DashMap::clear()`. Adds regression coverage for FFI-handle, watcher, and configuration cleanup during disposal. ### Expose network_type on IceCandidateStats Chromium's local `RTCIceCandidateStats` carries a non-standard `networkType` field (WiFi, cellular, ethernet, etc.), but `IceCandidateStats` had no place to put it, so it was silently dropped during `get_stats()` deserialization. Adds `network_type: Option<String>` to the struct; non-breaking since it already derives `#[serde(default)]`. ### Fix room-session and data-channel leaks across connect/disconnect cycles. The E2EE manager callback now captures `RoomSession` weakly so the session can drop after disconnect. Data-channel observer callbacks are cleared during RTC teardown so the observer/callback cycle cannot keep peer connections alive. Adds regression coverage for room-session destruction and data-channel callback cleanup. ### Fix native video-source lifecycle and NVENC initialization failure handling. The raw-video keepalive task now uses a weak liveness check and defers its black I420 buffer allocation until source liveness is confirmed, so dropping an unused source releases its resources. `nvEncInitializeEncoder` failures now propagate instead of leaving the encoder half-initialized. # livekit-ffi 0.12.77 (2026-09-08) ## Features - Removes livekit-runtime and converts this package to be tokio only again - #1375 (@1egoman) ## Fixes - Add data streams v2 to exposed uniffi interface - #1286 (@1egoman) - Add the `PASSTHROUGH` encoding preset and remove the unused `UpdateEgressRequest` from the generated protocol - Fix pre-encoded frame segfault on macOS - Handle capture of dmabuf using existing capture path - Add `self_test_http_get` / `self_test_ws_echo` / `has_http_client` / `has_ws_client` UniFFI exports so foreign hosts can exercise the transport seam end-to-end. ### Make AdmProxy worker-thread-affine: all platform ADM access now happens on the WebRTC worker thread, matching the ADM threading contract. - The platform ADM is now created lazily on the first PlatformAudio acquire on all platforms, so apps that never use platform audio never construct it. - Fixes Android platform recording delivering no audio: the audio transport was never registered on the lazily created ADM. - Fixes a shutdown race by keeping the runtime threads alive as long as Rust can reach the audio device controller. - Adds a `platform_audio` example exercising the PlatformAudio API and the worker-thread marshaling. ### Add agent guidance for detecting and preventing memory-lifecycle regressions in Rust, FFI, and native WebRTC code. ### Close peer connections before awaiting signal teardown `SessionInner::close` released the peer connections only after two awaits that can block indefinitely, so cancelling `close()` — for example by wrapping it in a timeout — left the transports open and their ICE UDP sockets bound for the lifetime of the process. Long-lived clients eventually exhausted their file descriptors. The transports are now closed before the first await, which makes the teardown safe to cancel. ### Moves the internal region-discovery cache into a new `livekit-region` crate. No public API or behaviour change. ### Moves the signalling client into a new `livekit-signaling` crate. livekit-api re-exports it under the historical `livekit_api::signal_client` path, now marked deprecated: it is internal SDK API, and dependents should use livekit-signaling directly. livekit-api no longer depends on livekit-net. Also drops two dependencies that were declared but never used: `scopeguard` and `bytes`. ### Fix CUDA and FFI resource cleanup during SDK shutdown. NVIDIA encoder and decoder factories now share a reference-counted CUDA context and destroy it when the final factory is dropped. FFI shutdown now releases leftover handles one at a time so nested `drop_handle` calls do not re-enter `DashMap::clear()`. Adds regression coverage for FFI-handle, watcher, and configuration cleanup during disposal. ### Expose network_type on IceCandidateStats Chromium's local `RTCIceCandidateStats` carries a non-standard `networkType` field (WiFi, cellular, ethernet, etc.), but `IceCandidateStats` had no place to put it, so it was silently dropped during `get_stats()` deserialization. Adds `network_type: Option<String>` to the struct; non-breaking since it already derives `#[serde(default)]`. ### Fix room-session and data-channel leaks across connect/disconnect cycles. The E2EE manager callback now captures `RoomSession` weakly so the session can drop after disconnect. Data-channel observer callbacks are cleared during RTC teardown so the observer/callback cycle cannot keep peer connections alive. Adds regression coverage for room-session destruction and data-channel callback cleanup. ### Fix native video-source lifecycle and NVENC initialization failure handling. The raw-video keepalive task now uses a weak liveness check and defers its black I420 buffer allocation until source liveness is confirmed, so dropping an unused source releases its resources. `nvEncInitializeEncoder` failures now propagate instead of leaving the encoder half-initialized. # livekit-net 0.1.3 (2026-09-08) ## Features - Removes livekit-runtime and converts this package to be tokio only again - #1375 (@1egoman) ## Fixes - Add data streams v2 to exposed uniffi interface - #1286 (@1egoman) - Add `self_test_http_get` / `self_test_ws_echo` / `has_http_client` / `has_ws_client` UniFFI exports so foreign hosts can exercise the transport seam end-to-end. # livekit-data-stream 0.1.4 (2026-09-08) ## Fixes - Add data streams v2 to exposed uniffi interface - #1286 (@1egoman) - Add the `PASSTHROUGH` encoding preset and remove the unused `UpdateEgressRequest` from the generated protocol # libwebrtc 0.3.47 (2026-09-08) ## Features - Handle capture of dmabuf using existing capture path - Removes livekit-runtime and converts this package to be tokio only again - #1375 (@1egoman) ### Expose network_type on IceCandidateStats Chromium's local `RTCIceCandidateStats` carries a non-standard `networkType` field (WiFi, cellular, ethernet, etc.), but `IceCandidateStats` had no place to put it, so it was silently dropped during `get_stats()` deserialization. Adds `network_type: Option<String>` to the struct; non-breaking since it already derives `#[serde(default)]`. ## Fixes - Fix pre-encoded frame segfault on macOS ### Make AdmProxy worker-thread-affine: all platform ADM access now happens on the WebRTC worker thread, matching the ADM threading contract. - The platform ADM is now created lazily on the first PlatformAudio acquire on all platforms, so apps that never use platform audio never construct it. - Fixes Android platform recording delivering no audio: the audio transport was never registered on the lazily created ADM. - Fixes a shutdown race by keeping the runtime threads alive as long as Rust can reach the audio device controller. - Adds a `platform_audio` example exercising the PlatformAudio API and the worker-thread marshaling. ### Add agent guidance for detecting and preventing memory-lifecycle regressions in Rust, FFI, and native WebRTC code. ### Fix CUDA and FFI resource cleanup during SDK shutdown. NVIDIA encoder and decoder factories now share a reference-counted CUDA context and destroy it when the final factory is dropped. FFI shutdown now releases leftover handles one at a time so nested `drop_handle` calls do not re-enter `DashMap::clear()`. Adds regression coverage for FFI-handle, watcher, and configuration cleanup during disposal. ### Fix room-session and data-channel leaks across connect/disconnect cycles. The E2EE manager callback now captures `RoomSession` weakly so the session can drop after disconnect. Data-channel observer callbacks are cleared during RTC teardown so the observer/callback cycle cannot keep peer connections alive. Adds regression coverage for room-session destruction and data-channel callback cleanup. ### Fix native video-source lifecycle and NVENC initialization failure handling. The raw-video keepalive task now uses a weak liveness check and defers its black I420 buffer allocation until source liveness is confirmed, so dropping an unused source releases its resources. `nvEncInitializeEncoder` failures now propagate instead of leaving the encoder half-initialized. # webrtc-sys 0.3.44 (2026-09-08) ## Features - Handle capture of dmabuf using existing capture path ## Fixes - Fix pre-encoded frame segfault on macOS ### Make AdmProxy worker-thread-affine: all platform ADM access now happens on the WebRTC worker thread, matching the ADM threading contract. - The platform ADM is now created lazily on the first PlatformAudio acquire on all platforms, so apps that never use platform audio never construct it. - Fixes Android platform recording delivering no audio: the audio transport was never registered on the lazily created ADM. - Fixes a shutdown race by keeping the runtime threads alive as long as Rust can reach the audio device controller. - Adds a `platform_audio` example exercising the PlatformAudio API and the worker-thread marshaling. ### Add agent guidance for detecting and preventing memory-lifecycle regressions in Rust, FFI, and native WebRTC code. ### Fix CUDA and FFI resource cleanup during SDK shutdown. NVIDIA encoder and decoder factories now share a reference-counted CUDA context and destroy it when the final factory is dropped. FFI shutdown now releases leftover handles one at a time so nested `drop_handle` calls do not re-enter `DashMap::clear()`. Adds regression coverage for FFI-handle, watcher, and configuration cleanup during disposal. ### Fix native video-source lifecycle and NVENC initialization failure handling. The raw-video keepalive task now uses a weak liveness check and defers its black I420 buffer allocation until source liveness is confirmed, so dropping an unused source releases its resources. `nvEncInitializeEncoder` failures now propagate instead of leaving the encoder half-initialized. # livekit-region 0.1.1 (2026-09-08) ## Fixes ### Moves the internal region-discovery cache into a new `livekit-region` crate. No public API or behaviour change. # livekit-api 0.7.0 (2026-09-08) ## Breaking Changes - Removes livekit-runtime and converts this package to be tokio only again - #1375 (@1egoman) ## Fixes - Add data streams v2 to exposed uniffi interface - #1286 (@1egoman) - Add the `PASSTHROUGH` encoding preset and remove the unused `UpdateEgressRequest` from the generated protocol - Add `self_test_http_get` / `self_test_ws_echo` / `has_http_client` / `has_ws_client` UniFFI exports so foreign hosts can exercise the transport seam end-to-end. - Update sip_busy test GRPc code: failed_precondition -> failed_precondition ### Moves the internal region-discovery cache into a new `livekit-region` crate. No public API or behaviour change. ### Moves the signalling client into a new `livekit-signaling` crate. livekit-api re-exports it under the historical `livekit_api::signal_client` path, now marked deprecated: it is internal SDK API, and dependents should use livekit-signaling directly. livekit-api no longer depends on livekit-net. Also drops two dependencies that were declared but never used: `scopeguard` and `bytes`. # livekit-token 0.1.2 (2026-09-08) ## Fixes - Add the `PASSTHROUGH` encoding preset and remove the unused `UpdateEgressRequest` from the generated protocol Co-authored-by: knope-bot[bot] <152252888+knope-bot[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>

1egoman force-pushed the remove-livekit-runtime branch from 5501fdd to 3aac1fe Compare August 28, 2026 17:23

1egoman added 9 commits August 28, 2026 13:29

feat: drop livekit-runtime from livekit crate

70c29c3

refactor: cut over libwebrtc back to tokio from livekit-runtime

b4dc7d8

refactor: make livekit-api directly use tokio

9fd34ae

fix: drop livekit-runtime from livekit-datatrack

a1161ed

refactor: drop livekit-runtime from livekit-net

a52cd1c

fix: make livekit-signaling no longer use livekit-net

9b0c766

refactor: move livekit crate to use tokio directly

0201e98

refactor: remove old *-tokio features which are in non public crates

ae34024

fix: update tests in ci to use new features

b4b0143

1egoman force-pushed the remove-livekit-runtime branch from 3aac1fe to b4b0143 Compare August 28, 2026 17:35

Create remove_livekit_runtime.md

910e321

1egoman mentioned this pull request Aug 28, 2026

Better encapsulate livekit-runtime using a new Runtime trait #1369

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1egoman commented Aug 28, 2026

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1egoman marked this pull request as ready for review August 28, 2026 18:46

1egoman requested review from MaxHeimbrock, cloudwebrtc, jhugman, ladvoc and lukasIO as code owners August 28, 2026 18:46

devin-ai-integration Bot reviewed Aug 28, 2026

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xianshijing-lk reviewed Aug 28, 2026

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Comment thread .changeset/remove_livekit_runtime.md Outdated

theomonnom approved these changes Aug 28, 2026

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ladvoc approved these changes Aug 28, 2026

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1egoman added 2 commits August 31, 2026 11:29

fix: alter changeset to be minor

780b828

docs: drop multiple runtime note from readme

436ed66

1egoman merged commit f803fca into main Aug 31, 2026
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1egoman deleted the remove-livekit-runtime branch August 31, 2026 16:00

knope-bot Bot mentioned this pull request Aug 31, 2026

Release packages #1362

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Remove livekit-runtime - #1375

Remove livekit-runtime#1375
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