Rust Development

This skill covers Rust development with two specialized reference documents:

When Starting a New Project

Use Rust-Project-Setup.md for:

• Creating new Rust CLI/TUI applications from scratch
• Cargo.toml setup and dependency selection
• Module structure and organization
• System dependency documentation (ALSA, X11, OpenGL, etc.)
• Configuration with serde/toml
• README and documentation templates
• Step-by-step implementation workflow

When Writing Code

Use Rust-Patterns.md for:

• Trait-based abstractions for swappable implementations
• Error handling (anyhow vs thiserror)
• CLI argument parsing with clap
• Structured logging with tracing
• Frame timing and performance monitoring
• Linux device I/O (v4l2, video processing)
• Color space conversion (RGB to YUYV)
• Testing patterns with mocks

Quick Reference

Error Handling Decision

Is this a library?
├─ Yes → Use thiserror for typed errors
└─ No (application) → Use anyhow with .context()

Common Dependencies

| Need | Crate | Notes | |------|-------|-------| | Error handling (app) | anyhow | Flexible, ergonomic | | Error handling (lib) | thiserror | Typed errors | | CLI parsing | clap v4 | Use derive feature | | TUI framework | ratatui | With crossterm | | Configuration | serde + toml | Standard approach | | Async runtime | tokio | Most popular | | HTTP client | reqwest | High-level, async | | Logging | tracing | Structured logging |

Cargo Commands

cargo check          # Fast compilation check
cargo build          # Debug build
cargo build --release # Optimized build
cargo test           # Run tests
cargo clippy         # Lint code
cargo fmt            # Format code
cargo doc --open     # Generate docs

Cargo.lock Decision

• Applications/Binaries: Commit Cargo.lock (reproducible builds)
• Libraries: Don't commit (let downstream decide versions)