{
"crate_groups": [
{
"slug": "tooling",
"name": "Tooling",
"description": "Developer tools for working with Rust projects.",
"subgroups": [],
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Toolchain Management",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "rustup",
"link": "https://rustup.rs",
"notes": "Install, manage, and upgrade versions of rustc, cargo, clippy, rustfmt and more."
}]
},
{
"name": "Linting",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "clippy",
"link": "https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-clippy#usage",
"notes": "The official Rust linter."
}]
},
{
"name": "Code Formatting",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "rustfmt",
"link": "https://github.com/rust-lang/rustfmt#rustfmt----",
"notes": "The official Rust code formatter."
}]
},
{
"name": "Cross Compilation",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "cross",
"link": "https://github.com/cross-rs/cross#cross",
"notes": "Seamless cross-compiling using Docker containers."
}]
},
{
"name": "Managing Dependencies",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "cargo-edit",
"link": "https://github.com/killercup/cargo-edit",
"notes": "Adds 'cargo upgrade' and 'cargo set-version' commands to cargo"
}, {
"name": "cargo-outdated",
"link": "https://github.com/kbknapp/cargo-outdated#cargo-outdated",
"notes": "Finds dependencies that have available updates"
}, {
"name": "cargo-audit",
"link": "https://github.com/RustSec/rustsec/tree/main/cargo-audit#rustsec-cargo-audit",
"notes": "Check dependencies for reported security vulnerabilities"
}, {
"name": "cargo-license",
"link": "https://github.com/onur/cargo-license#cargo-license",
"notes": "Lists licenses of all dependencies"
}, {
"name": "cargo-deny",
"link": "https://github.com/EmbarkStudios/cargo-deny#-cargo-deny",
"notes": "Enforce policies on your code and dependencies."
}]
},
{
"name": "Testing",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "cargo-nextest",
"link": "https://nexte.st",
"notes": "Faster, better test runner"
}]
},
{
"name": "Benchmarking",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "criterion",
"notes": "Statistically accurate benchmarking tool for benchmarking libraries"
}, {
"name": "hyperfine",
"link": "https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine#hyperfine",
"notes": "Tool for benchmarking compiled binaries (similar to unix time command but better)"
}]
},
{
"name": "Performance",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "cargo-flamegraph",
"link": "https://github.com/flamegraph-rs/flamegraph#cargo-flamegraph",
"notes": "Execution flamegraph generation"
}, {
"name": "dhat",
"notes": "Heap memory profiling"
}, {
"name": "cargo-show-asm",
"notes": "Print the generated assembly for a Rust function"
}]
},
{
"name": "Debugging Macros",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "cargo-expand",
"link": "https://github.com/dtolnay/cargo-expand#cargo-expand",
"notes": "Allows you to inspect the code that macros expand to"
}]
},
{
"name": "Release Automation",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "cargo-release",
"link": "https://github.com/crate-ci/cargo-release#cargo-release",
"notes": "Helper for publishing new crate versions."
}]
},
{
"name": "Continuous Integration",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "rust-toolchain (github action)",
"link": "https://github.com/dtolnay/rust-toolchain#install-rust-toolchain",
"notes": "Github action to install Rust components via rustup"
}, {
"name": "rust-cache (github action)",
"link": "https://github.com/Swatinem/rust-cache#rust-cache-action",
"notes": "Github action to cache compilation artifacts and speed up subsequent runs."
}]
}
]
},
{
"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",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "rand",
"notes": "De facto standard random number generation library split out from the standard library"
}]
},
{
"name": "Time & Date",
"notes": "Unfortunately there is no clear answer as to which is best between time and chrono.
Evaluate for yourself between these two, but be resassured that both are trusted and well-maintained.",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "time",
"notes": "A smaller, simpler library. Preferrable if covers your needs, but it's quite limited in what it provides."
}, {
"name": "chrono",
"notes": "The most comprehensive and full-featured datetime library, but more complex because of it."
}]
},
{
"name": "Serialization (JSON, YAML, etc)",
"notes": "See here for supported formats.",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "serde",
"notes": "De facto standard serialization library. Use in conjunction with sub-crates like serde_json for the specific format that you are using."
}]
},
{
"name": "Regular Expressions",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "regex",
"notes": "De facto standard 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": "UUIDs",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "uuid",
"notes": "Implements generating and parsing UUIDs and a number of utility functions"
}]
},
{
"name": "Temporary files",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "tempfile",
"notes": "Supports both temporary files and temporary directories"
}]
},
{
"name": "Gzip (de)compression",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "flate2",
"notes": "Uses a pure-Rust implementation by default. Use feature flags to opt in to system zlib."
}]
},
{
"name": "Insertion-ordered map",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "indexmap",
"notes": "A HashMap that seperately keeps track of insertion order and allows you to efficiently iterate over its elements in that order"
}]
},
{
"name": "Stack-allocated arrays",
"recommendations": [{
"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",
"notes": "See the HTTP section below for server-side libraries",
"recommendations": [{
"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",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "anyhow",
"notes": "Provides a boxed error type that can hold any error, and helpers for generating an application-level stack trace."
}, {
"name": "color-eyre",
"notes": "A fork of anyhow that gives you more control over the format of the generated error messages. Recommended if you need intend to present error messages to end users. Otherwise anyhow is simpler."
}]
},
{
"name": "For libraries",
"notes": "See also: Designing error types in Rust",
"recommendations": [{
"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",
"recommendations": [{
"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": "Structured logging",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "tracing",
"notes": "Tracing is now the go-to crate for logging."
}, {
"name": "slog",
"notes": "Structured 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",
"recommendations": [{
"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",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "itertools",
"notes": "A bunch of useful methods on iterators that aren't in the stdlib"
}]
},
{
"name": "Macro helpers",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "syn",
"notes": "Parse rust source code"
}, {
"name": "quote",
"notes": "Quasi quoting rust (useful for interpolating generated code with literal code)"
}, {
"name": "paste",
"notes": "Concatenating and manipulating identifiers"
}]
},
{
"name": "Safe type casts",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "bytemuck"
}]
},
{
"name": "Bitflags",
"recommendations": [{
"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",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "memmap2",
"notes": "The older memmap crate is unmaintained."
}]
},
{
"name": "Libc",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "libc",
"notes": "Bindings for directly calling libc functions."
}]
},
{
"name": "Windows (OS)",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "windows",
"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"
}]
},
{
"name": "*nix (OSs)",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "nix",
"notes": "Bindings to the various *nix system functions. (Unix, Linux, MacOS, etc.)"
}]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "math-scientific",
"name": "Math / Scientific",
"description": "The num crate is trusted and has a variety of numberical functionality that is missing from the standard library.",
"subgroups": [],
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Abstracting over different number types",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "num-traits",
"notes": "Traits like Number, Add, etc that allow you write functions that are generic over the specific numeric type"
}]
},
{
"name": "Big Integers",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "num-bigint", "notes": "It's not the fastest, but it's part of the trusted num library." },
{ "name": "rug", "notes": "LGPL licensed. Wrapper for GMP. Much faster than num-bigint." }
]
},
{
"name": "Big Decimals",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "rust_decimal", "notes": "The binary representation consists of a 96 bit integer number, a scaling factor used to specify the decimal fraction and a 1 bit sign." }
]
},
{
"name": "Sortable Floats",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "ordered-float", "notes": "Float types that don't allow NaN and are therefore orderable. You can also use the total_cmp method from the standard library like .sort_by(|a, b| a.total_cmp(&b))." }
]
},
{
"name": "Linear Algebra",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "nalgebra", "notes": "General-purpose linear algebra library with transformations and statically-sized or dynamically-sized matrices. However it supports only vectors (1d) and matrices (2d) and not higher-dimensional tensors." },
{ "name": "ndarray", "notes": "Less featureful than nalgebra but supports arbitrarily dimensioned arrays" }
]
},
{
"name": "DataFrames",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "polars", "notes": "Similar to the Pandas library in Python but in pure Rust. Uses the Apache Arrow Columnar Format as the memory model." }
]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "ffi",
"name": "FFI / Interop",
"description": "Crates that allow Rust to interact with code written in other languages.",
"subgroups": [],
"purposes": [
{
"name": "C",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "bindgen", "notes": "Generate Rust bindings to C libraries" },
{ "name": "cbindgen", "notes": "Generate C bindings to Rust libraries" }
]
},
{
"name": "C++",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "cxx", "notes": "Safe C++ <-> Rust interop by generating code for both sides." }
]
},
{
"name": "Python",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "pyo3", "notes": "Supports both calling python code from Rust and exposing Rust code to Python" }
]
},
{
"name": "Node.js",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "napi", "notes": "is a framework for building pre-compiled Node.js addons in Rust." },
{ "name": "neon", "notes": "Slower than napi, but also widely used and well-maintained" }
]
},
{
"name": "Ruby",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "rutie", "notes": "Supports both embedding Rust into Ruby applications and embedding Ruby into Rust applications" }
]
},
{
"name": "Objective-C",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "objc", "notes": "Interop with the Objective-C runtime" }
]
},
{
"name": "Java/JVM",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "jni", "notes": "Implement Java methods for JVM and Android in Rust. Call Java code from Rust. Embed JVM in Rust applications." }
]
},
{
"name": "Lua",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "mlua", "notes": "Bindings to Lua 5.4, 5.3, 5.2, 5.1 (including LuaJIT)" }
]
},
{
"name": "Dart/Flutter",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "flutter_rust_bridge", "notes": "Works with Dart with or without Flutter" }
]
},
{
"name": "Erlang/Elixir",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "rustler", "notes": "Safe Rust bridge for creating Erlang NIF functions" }
]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "cryptography",
"name": "Cryptography",
"description": "Crates that provide implementations of cryptographic algorithms. This section attempts to list the best crates for the listed algorithms, but does not intend to make recommendations for the algorithms themselves.
",
"subgroups": [],
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Password Hashing",
"notes": "For more algorithms, see Rust Crypto Password Hashes.",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "argon2" },
{ "name": "scrypt" },
{ "name": "bcrypt" }
]
},
{
"name": "General Purpose Hashing",
"notes": "For more algorithms, see Rust Crypto Hashes.",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "sha2" },
{ "name": "sha1" },
{ "name": "md-5" }
]
},
{
"name": "AEAD Encryption",
"notes": "For more algorithms, see Rust Crypto AEADs.",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "aes-gcm-siv" },
{ "name": "aes-gcm" },
{ "name": "chacha20poly1305" }
]
},
{
"name": "RSA",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "rsa" }
]
},
{
"name": "Digital Signatures",
"notes": "For more algorithms, see Rust Crypto Signatures.",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "ed25519", "notes": "Use in conjunction with the ed25519-dalek crate." },
{ "name": "ecdsa" },
{ "name": "dsa" }
]
},
{
"name": "Certificate Formats",
"notes": "For more formats, see Rust Crypto Formats.",
"recommendations": [
{ "name": "der" },
{ "name": "pem-rfc7468" },
{ "name": "pkcs8" },
{ "name": "x509-cert" }
]
},
{
"name": "TLS / SSL",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "rustls",
"notes": "A portable pure-rust high-level implementation of TLS. Implements TLS 1.2 and higher."
}, {
"name": "native-tls",
"notes": "Delegates to the system TLS implementations on windows and macOS, and uses OpenSSL on linux."
}],
"see_also": [{
"name": "webpki",
"notes": "X.509 Certificate validation. Builds on top of ring."
}, {
"name": "ring",
"notes": "Fork of BoringSSL. Provides low-level cryptographic primitives for TLS/SSL"
}]
},
{
"name": "Utilities",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "subtle",
"notes": "Utilities for writing constant-time algorithms"
},
{
"name": "zeroize",
"notes": "Securely erase memory"
}]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "networking",
"name": "Networking",
"description": "TCP, HTTP, GRPc, etc. And the executors required to do asynchronous networking.",
"subgroups": [
{
"slug": "async-foundations",
"name": "Async Foundations",
"description": "To do async programming using the async-await in Rust you need a runtime to execute drive your Futures.",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "General Purpose Async Executors",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "tokio",
"notes": "The oldest async runtime in the Rust ecosystem and still the most widely supported. Recommended for new projects."
}, {
"name": "futures-executor",
"notes": "A minimal executor. In particular, the block_on function is useful if you want to run an async function synchronously in codebase that is mostly synchronous."
}],
"see_also": [{
"name": "async-std",
"notes": "A newer option that is very similar to tokio. Its API more closely mirrors the std library, but it doesn't have as much traction or ecosystem support as Tokio."
}]
},
{
"name": "Async Utilities",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "futures",
"notes": "Utility functions for working with Futures and Streams"
}, {
"name": "async-trait",
"notes": "Provides a workaround for the lack of language support for async functions in traits"
}]
},
{
"name": "io_uring",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "glommio",
"notes": "Use if you need io_uring support. Still somewhat experimental but rapidly maturing."
}]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "http-foundations",
"name": "HTTP",
"description": "HTTP client and server libraries, as well as lower-level building blocks.",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Types & Interfaces",
"recommendations": [{
"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",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "hyper",
"notes": "A low-level HTTP implementation (both client and server). Implements HTTP 1, 2, and 3. Works best with the tokio async runtime, but can support other runtimes."
}]
},
{
"name": "HTTP Client",
"recommendations": [{
"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."
}],
"see_also": [{
"name": "surf",
"notes": "Client that uses the async-std runtime rather than the tokio runtime. Not well maintained."
}]
},
{
"name": "HTTP Server",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "axum",
"notes": "A minimal and ergonomic framework. An official part of the tokio project. Recommend for most new projects."
}, {
"name": "actix-web",
"notes": "A performance focussed framework. All Rust frameworks are fast, but choose actix-web if you need the absolutely maximum performance."
}],
"see_also": [{
"name": "rocket",
"notes": "Has an excellent API and a solid implementation. However development has been intermittent, and the async branch still doesn't have a stable release. Use of rocket is not recommended until this has been fixed."
}, {
"name": "poem",
"notes": "Automatically generates OpenAPI definitions."
}, {
"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 particularly like the API"
}, {
"name": "tide",
"notes": "Similar to Axum, but based on async-std rather than tokio"
}]
},
{
"name": "GraphQL Server",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "async-graphql",
"notes": "A high-performance graphql server library that's fully specification compliant. Integrates with actix-web, axum, poem, rocket, tide, warp."
}]
}
]
},
{
"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",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "tungstenite",
"notes": "Low-level crate that others build on"
}]
},
{
"name": "General Purpose",
"recommendations": [{
"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",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "General Purpose",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "tonic",
"notes": "gRPC over HTTP/2 with full support for asynchronous code. Works with tokio"
}]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "databases",
"name": "Databases",
"subgroups": [
{
"slug": "sql-databases",
"name": "SQL Databases",
"description": "The multi-database options (SQLx and Diesel) are generally quite good, and worth considering even if you only need support for a single database.",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Multi Database",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "sqlx",
"notes": "Works with Postgres, MySQL, SQLite, and MS SQL.
Supports compile time checking of queries. Async: supports both tokio and async-std."
}]
},
{
"name": "ORMs",
"recommendations": [
{
"name": "diesel",
"notes": "Has excellent performance and takes an approach of strict compile time guarantees. The main crate is Sync only, but diesel-async provides an async connection implementation."
}, {
"name": "sea-orm",
"notes": "Built on top of sqlx (see above). There is also a related sea-query crate that provides a query builder without full ORM functionality."
}]
},
{
"name": "Postgres",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "tokio-postgres",
"notes": "Postgres-specific library. Performs better than SQLx"
}]
},
{
"name": "MySQL",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "mysql_async",
"notes": "Has a poorly designed API. Prefer SQLx or Diesel for MySQL"
}]
},
{
"name": "SQLite",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "rusqlite",
"notes": "Provides a sync API to SQLite + provides access to advanced sqlite features."
}]
},
{
"name": "MS SQL",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "tiberius",
"notes": "MS SQL specific library. Has better support for advanced column types than SQLx."
}]
},
{
"name": "Oracle",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "diesel-oci",
"notes": "Diesel backend and connection implementation for oracle databases"
}, {
"name": "oracle",
"notes": "Rust bindings to ODPI-C"
}]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "other-databases",
"name": "Other Databases",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Redis",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "redis"
}]
},
{
"name": "MongoDB",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "mongodb"
}]
},
{
"name": "ElasticSearch",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "elasticsearch"
}]
},
{
"name": "Rocks DB",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "rocksdb"
}]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "sql-utilities",
"name": "Utilities",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Connection pool",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "deadpool",
"notes": "A dead simple async pool for connections and objects of any type."
}]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "cli-tools",
"name": "CLIs",
"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",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "clap",
"notes": "Ergonomic, battle-tested, includes the kitchen sink, and is fast at runtime. However compile times can be slow"
}],
"see_also": [{
"name": "bpaf",
"notes": "Fast compile times than clap while still being featureful. But still has some rough edges, and the API can be confusing at times."
}]
},
{
"name": "Minimal",
"recommendations": [{
"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",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "globset",
"notes": "High-performance globbing that allows multiple globs to be evaluated at once"
}]
},
{
"name": "Directory walking",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "walkdir",
"notes": "Basic recursive filesystem walking."
}, {
"name": "ignore",
"notes": "Recursive filesystem walking that respects ignore files (like .gitignore)"
}]
},
{
"name": "File watching",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "notify",
"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",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "termcolor",
"notes": "Cross-platform terminal colour output"
}]
},
{
"name": "Progress indicators",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "indicatif",
"notes": "Progress bars and spinners"
}]
},
{
"name": "Full TUI library",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "crossterm",
"notes": "Cross-platform terminal rendering and event handling"
}]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "concurrency",
"name": "Concurrency",
"subgroups": [
{
"slug": "data-structures",
"name": "Data Structures",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Mutex",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "parking_lot",
"notes": "std::sync::Mutex also works fine. But Parking Lot is faster."
}]
},
{
"name": "Atomic pointer swapping",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "arc-swap",
"notes": "Useful for sharing data that has many readers but few writers"
}]
},
{
"name": "Concurrent HashMap",
"notes": "See conc-map-bench for comparative benchmarks of concurrent HashMaps.",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "dashmap",
"notes": "The fastest for general purpose workloads"
}, {
"name": "flurry",
"notes": "Particularly good for read-heavy workloads."
}]
},
{
"name": "Channels",
"notes": "See communicating-between-sync-and-async-code for notes on when to use async-specific channels vs general purpose channels.",
"recommendations": [
{
"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"
}]
},
{
"name": "Parallel computation",
"recommendations": [
{
"name": "rayon",
"notes": "Convert sequential computation into parallel computation with one call - `par_iter` instead of `iter`"
}]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "graphics",
"name": "Graphics",
"subgroups": [
{
"slug": "gui",
"name": "GUI",
"description": "GTK and Tauri are probably the only options which can be described as production-ready without caveats.
The Rust native options are usable for simple projects but are all still quite incomplete.",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "GTK",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "gtk4",
"notes": "Rust bindings to GTK4. These are quite well supported, although you'll often need to use the C documentation."
}, {
"name": "relm4",
"notes": "A higher-level library that sits on top of gtk4-rs"
}]
},
{
"name": "Web-based GUI",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "tauri",
"notes": "Electron-like web-based UI. Except it uses system webviews rather than shipping chromium, and non-UI code is written in Rust rather than node.js"
}, {
"name": "dioxus",
"notes": "A very nice API layer that has Tauri, Web, and TUI renderers. A native renderer is coming soon."
}]
},
{
"name": "Rust Native GUI",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "iced",
"notes": "Retained mode UI with a nice API. It's useable for basic apps, but has a number of missing features including multiple windows, layers, and proper text rendering."
}, {
"name": "egui",
"notes": "Immediate-mode UI. Lots of widgets. The most useable out of the box if your needs are simple and you don't need to customise of the look and feel"
}, {
"name": "slint",
"notes": "Possibly the most complete rust-native UI library. But note that it's dual GPL3/commercial licensed."
}],
"see_also": [{
"name": "vizia",
"notes": "Fairly complete with sophisticated layout and text layout but has yet to make a stable release."
}, {
"name": "freya",
"link": "https://github.com/marc2332/freya",
"notes": "A very nice API layer in based on Dioxus but it renders using Skia"
}, {
"name": "druid",
"notes": "Druid is a relatively mature alternative to Iced/Slint, however it has been discontinued in favour of Xilem so it's use for new projects is discouraged."
}, {
"name": "xilem",
"link": "https://github.com/linebender/xilem",
"notes": "The replacement for Druid based on the more interoperable Vello and Glazier crates. However, it's currently not complete enough to be usable."
}, {
"name": "rui",
"notes": "SwiftUI inspired UI framework."
}, {
"name": "concoct",
"notes": "Jetpack compose inspired UI framework. Promising but still immature, even compared to other Rust GUI frameworks."
}, {
"name": "kas",
"notes": "One of the older Rust GUI crates, but it never seems to have caught on for some reason"
}]
}, {
"name": "Window creation",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "winit",
"notes": "The defacto standard option. Uses an event loop based architecture. Widely used and should probably be the default choice."
}, {
"name": "tao",
"notes": "A fork of winit by the Tauri project which adds support for things like system menus that desktop apps need."
}, {
"name": "glazier",
"notes": "A new competitor to winit based on the old druid-shell. Has a callback that may be better than the event loop architecture for some tasks. Doesn't yet have a stable release."
}, {
"name": "baseview",
"notes": "Specialized window creation library targetting windows to be embedded in other applications (e.g. DAW plugins)"
}]
}, {
"name": "2D Canvas Renders",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "femtovg",
"notes": "Pure Rust. Offers a simple API. Probably the easiest to get started with."
}, {
"name": "skia-safe",
"notes": "Based on the Skia C++ library. The most complete option with the best performance. However, it can be difficult to get it to compile."
}, {
"name": "vello",
"notes": "Pure Rust, and uses cutting edge techniques to render using the GPU. Still somewhat immature and hasn't yet put out a stable release."
}]
}, {
"name": "UI layout",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "taffy",
"notes": "Supports Flexbox and CSS Grid algorithms."
}, {
"name": "morphom",
"notes": "Implements it's own layout algorithm based on Subform layout"
}]
}, {
"name": "Text layout",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "cosmic-text",
"notes": "Full text layout including rich text and support for BiDi and non-latin scripts. The best option for now."
}, {
"name": "parley",
"notes": "Another very accomplished text layout library used by Druid/Xilem."
}]
}, {
"name": "Accessibility",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "accesskit",
"notes": "Allows you to export a semantic tree representing your UI to make accessible to screen readers and other assistive technologies"
}]
}, {
"name": "Clipboard",
"notes": "Both cli-clipboard and copypasta are forks of the original rust-clipboard that add support for wayland.",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "cli-clipboard",
"notes": ""
}, {
"name": "copypasta",
"notes": ""
}]
}, {
"name": "File Dialogs",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "rfd",
"notes": "Platform-native open/save file dialogs. Can be used in conjunction with other UI libraries."
}]
}
]
},
{
"slug": "game-development",
"name": "Game Development",
"purposes": [
{
"name": "Game Engines",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "bevy",
"notes": "By far the most developed Rust game engine. It's still early, but already impressive and very much useable."
}, {
"name": "ggez",
"notes": "A simpler option for 2d games only."
}]
},
{
"name": "3D Math",
"recommendations": [{
"name": "glam",
"notes": "Fast math library optimised for game development use cases"
}]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}