{
"crate_groups": [
{
"slug": "common",
"name": "Common",
"description": "Very commonly used crates that everyone should know about",
"subgroups": [
{
"slug": "general",
"name": "General",
"description": "General purpose ",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Random numbers",
"crates": [{
"name": "rand",
"notes": "De facto random number generation library split out from the standard library"
}]
},
{
"name": "UUIDs",
"crates": [{
"name": "uuid",
"notes": "Implements generating and parsing UUIDs and a number of utility functions"
}]
},
{
"name": "Serialization (JSON, YAML, etc)",
"crates": [{
"name": "serde",
"notes": "De facto serialization library. Use in conjunction with sub-crates like serde_json for the specific format that you are using."
}]
},
{
"name": "Regular Expressions",
"crates": [{
"name": "regex",
"notes": "De facto regex library. Very fast, but does not support fancier features such as backtracking."
},
{
"name": "fancy_regex",
"notes": "Use if need features such as backtracking which regex doesn't support"
}]
},
{
"name": "Temporary files",
"crates": [{
"name": "tempfile",
"notes": "Supports both temporary files and temporary directories"
}]
},
{
"name": "Gzip (de)compression",
"crates": [{
"name": "flate2",
"notes": "Uses a pure-Rust implementation by default. Use feature flags to opt in to system zlib."
}]
},
{
"name": "Time & Date",
"crates": [{
"name": "time",
"notes": "The original datetime crate which was split out of std pre-rust-1.0. Preferrable if covers your needs, but it's quite limited in what it provides."
}, {
"name": "chrono",
"notes": "The most comphrehensive and full-featured datetime library, but more complex because of it."
}]
},
{
"name": "Insertion-ordered map",
"crates": [{
"name": "indexmap",
"notes": "A HashMap that seperately keeps track of insertion order and allows you to efficiently iterate over it's elements in that order"
}]
},
{
"name": "Stack-allocated arrays",
"crates": [{
"name": "arrayvec",
"notes": "Arrays that are ONLY stack-allocated with fixed capacity"
}, {
"name": "smallvec",
"notes": "Arrays that are stack-allocated with fallback to the heap if the fixed stack capacity is exceeded"
}, {
"name": "tinyvec",
"notes": "Stack allocated arrays in 100% safe Rust code but requires items to implement the Default trait."
}]
},
{
"name": "HTTP Requests",
"crates": [{
"name": "reqwest",
"notes": "Full-fat HTTP client. Can be used in both synchronous and asynchronous code. Requires tokio runtime."
}, {
"name": "ureq",
"notes": "Minimal synchronous HTTP client focussed on simplicity and minimising dependencies."
}]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "error-handling",
"name": "Error Handling",
"description": "Crates for more easily handling errors",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "For applications",
"crates": [{
"name": "anyhow",
"notes": "Provides a boxed error type that can hold any error, and helpers for generating an application-level stack trace."
}]
},
{
"name": "For libraries",
"crates": [{
"name": "thiserror",
"notes": "Helps with generating boilerplate for enum-style error types."
}]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "logging",
"name": "Logging",
"description": "Crates for logging. Note that in general you will need a seperate crate for actually printing/storing the logs",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Text-based logging",
"crates": [{
"name": "tracing",
"notes": "Tracing is now the go-to crate for logging."
}, {
"name": "log",
"notes": "An older and simpler crate if your needs are simple and you are not using any async code."
}]
},
{
"name": "Structed logging",
"crates": [{
"name": "tracing",
"notes": "Tracing is now the go-to crate for logging."
}, {
"name": "slog",
"notes": "Structed logging"
}]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "lang-extensions",
"name": "Language Extensions",
"description": "General purpose utility crates that extend language and/or stdlib functionality.",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Lazy static variable initialization",
"crates": [{
"name": "once_cell",
"notes": "Newer crate with more ergonomic API. On track to be incorporated into the standard library. Should be preferred for all new projects."
}, {
"name": "lazy_static",
"notes": "Older crate. API is less convenient, but crate is stable and maintained."
}]
},
{
"name": "Iterator helpers",
"crates": [{
"name": "itertools",
"notes": "A bunch of useful methods on iterators that aren't in the stdlib"
}]
},
{
"name": "Abstracting over different number types",
"crates": [{
"name": "num",
"notes": "Traits like Number, Add, etc that allow you write functions that are generic over the specific numeric type"
}]
},
{
"name": "Endian conversion",
"crates": [{
"name": "byteorder",
"notes": "Utility functions to convert between different endianness or read/write data with a specific endianness"
}]
},
{
"name": "Bitflags",
"crates": [{
"name": "bitflags",
"notes": "Strongly typed bitflag types"
}]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "system",
"name": "System",
"description": "For low-level interaction with the underling platform / operating system",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Memory mapping files",
"crates": [{
"name": "memmap",
"notes": ""
}]
},
{
"name": "Libc",
"crates": [{
"name": "libc",
"notes": "Bindings for directly calling libc functions."
}]
},
{
"name": "Windows (OS)",
"crates": [{
"name": "windows-rs",
"notes": "The official Microsoft-provided crate for interacting with windows APIs"
}, {
"name": "winapi",
"notes": "Older binding to the windows APIs. Unofficial, but more complete than windows-rs"
}]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "networking",
"name": "Networking",
"description": "TCP, HTTP, GRPc, etc. And the executors required to do asynchronous networking.",
"subgroups": [
{
"slug": "async-executors",
"name": "Async Executors",
"description": "To do async programming using the async-await in Rust you need a runtime to execute drive your Futures.",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "General purpose",
"crates": [{
"name": "tokio",
"notes": "The oldest async runtime in the Rust ecosystem and still the most widely supported. Recommended for new projects."
}, {
"name": "async-std",
"notes": "A newer option that is very similar to tokio. It's API more closely mirrors the std library, but it doesn't have as much traction as Tokio."
}]
},
{
"name": "io_uring",
"crates": [{
"name": "glommio",
"notes": "Use if you need io_uring support. Still somewhat experimental but rapidly maturing."
}]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "http-foundations",
"name": "HTTP",
"description": "To do async programming using the async-await in Rust you need a runtime to execute drive your Futures.",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Types & Interfaces",
"crates": [{
"name": "http",
"notes": "The `http` crate doesn't actually contain an HTTP implementation. Just types and interfaces to help interoperability."
}]
},
{
"name": "Low-level HTTP Implementation",
"crates": [{
"name": "hyper",
"notes": "A low-level HTTP implementation (both client and server). Implements HTTP 1, 2, and 3. Requires the tokio async runtime."
}]
},
{
"name": "TLS / SSL",
"crates": [{
"name": "rustls",
"notes": "A portable pure-rust implementation of TLS"
}, {
"name": "rust-native-tls",
"notes": "Delegates to the system TLS implementations on windows and macOS, and uses OpenSSL on linux."
}]
},
{
"name": "HTTP Client",
"crates": [{
"name": "reqwest",
"notes": "Full-fat HTTP client. Can be used in both synchronous and asynchronous code. Requires tokio runtime."
},{
"name": "surf",
"notes": "Client that uses the async-std runtime rather than the tokio runtime."
}, {
"name": "ureq",
"notes": "Minimal synchronous HTTP client focussed on simplicity and minimising dependencies."
}]
},
{
"name": "HTTP Server",
"crates": [{
"name": "axum",
"notes": "A minimal and ergonomic framework. An official part of the tokio project. Recommend for most new projects."
}, {
"name": "tide",
"notes": "Similar to Axum, but based on async-std rather than tokio"
}, {
"name": "actix-web",
"notes": "A performance focussed framework. All Rust frameworks are fast, but choose actix-web if you need the absolutely maximum performance."
}, {
"name": "poem",
"notes": "Automatically generates OpenAPI defintions."
}, {
"name": "warp",
"notes": "Very similar to axum but with a quirkier API. This is a solid framework, but you should probably prefer Axum unless you particular like the API"
}, {
"name": "rocket",
"notes": "Focussed on ergonomics. This is a solid framework, however development has stalled. Avoid for new projects."
}]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "websockets",
"name": "Websockets",
"description": "This section includes libraries for you to use just websockets. However note that many of the HTTP server frameworks in the section above also support websockets",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Low-level",
"crates": [{
"name": "tungstenite-rs",
"notes": "Low-level crate that others build on"
}]
},
{
"name": "General Purpose",
"crates": [{
"name": "tokio-tungstenite",
"notes": "If you are using the tokio executor"
}, {
"name": "async-tungstenite",
"notes": "If you are using the async-std executor"
}]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "grpc",
"name": "gRPC",
"description": "",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "General Purpose",
"crates": [{
"name": "tonic",
"notes": "gRPC over HTTP/2 with full support for asynchronous code. Works with tokio"
}]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "cli-tools",
"name": "CLIs",
"description": "",
"subgroups": [
{
"slug": "argument-parsing",
"name": "Argument Parsing",
"description": "See argparse-benchmarks-rs for a full comparison of the crates mentioned here and more.",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Fully-featured",
"crates": [{
"name": "clap",
"notes": "Ergonomic, supports everything, and is fast at runtime. However compile times can be slow"
}]
},
{
"name": "Minimal",
"crates": [{
"name": "lexopt",
"notes": "Fast compile times, fast runtime, pedantic about correctness. API is less ergonomic"
}, {
"name": "pico-args",
"notes": "Fast compile times, fast runtime, more lax about correctness. API is more ergonomic"
}]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "utility",
"name": "Utility",
"description": "Helpers that are often useful when implementing CLIs",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Globbing",
"crates": [{
"name": "globset",
"notes": "High-performance globbing that allows multiple globs to be evaluated at once"
}]
},
{
"name": "Directory walking",
"crates": [{
"name": "walkdir",
"notes": "Basic recursive filesystem walking."
}, {
"name": "ignore",
"notes": "Recursive filesystem walking that respects ignore files (like .gitignore)"
}]
},
{
"name": "File watching",
"crates": [{
"name": "watchexec",
"notes": "Watch files or directories and execute a function when they change"
}]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "rendering",
"name": "Terminal Rendering",
"description": "For fancy terminal rendering and TUIs. The crates recommended here work cross-platform (including windows).",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Coloured Output",
"crates": [{
"name": "termcolor",
"notes": "Cross-platform terminal colour output"
}]
},
{
"name": "Full TUI library",
"crates": [{
"name": "crossterm",
"notes": "Cross-platform terminal rendering and event handling"
}]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "concurrency",
"name": "Concurrency",
"description": "",
"subgroups": [
{
"slug": "data-structures",
"name": "Data Structures",
"description": "See conc-map-bench for benchmarks of concurrent HashMaps.",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Mutex",
"crates": [{
"name": "parking_lot",
"notes": "std::mutex also works fine. But Parking Lot is faster."
}]
},
{
"name": "Atomic pointer swapping",
"crates": [{
"name": "arc_swap",
"notes": "Useful for sharing data that has many readers but few writers"
}]
},
{
"name": "Concurrent HashMap",
"crates": [{
"name": "dashmap",
"notes": "The fastest for general purpose workloads"
}, {
"name": "flurry",
"notes": "Particularly good for read-heavy workloads."
}]
},
{
"name": "Channels",
"crates": [{
"name": "crossbeam_channel",
"notes": "The absolute fastest channel implementation available. Implements Go-like 'select' feature."
}, {
"name": "flume",
"notes": "Smaller and simpler than crossbeam_channel and almost as fast"
}, {
"name": "postage",
"notes": "Channels that integrate nicely with async code"
}]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}