Can we use the confluent-kafka-javascript client

[godber]

I don't really understand what this is:

https://github.com/confluentinc/confluent-kafka-javascript

confluent-kafka-javascript is Confluent's JavaScript client for Apache Kafka and the Confluent Platform. This is an limited availability library. The goal is to provide an highly performant, reliable and easy to use JavaScript client that is based on node-rdkafka yet also API compatible with KafkaJS to provide flexibility to users and streamline migrations from other clients.

The main benefit from using this is it doesn't require build time compiliation.

Installation on any of these platforms is meant to be seamless, without any C/C++ compilation required.

I think this might benefit us by, at the very least, us not having to add a bunch of build dependencies. So no more node-gyp.

[godber]

We put this on hold as a back burner project. It will take a few tries to figure this out correctly, but I think we last concluded we can still benefit from switching to it. Maybe @sotojn recalls a more informative status.