Rust Guide

Applies to: Rust 2021 edition+, Systems Programming, CLIs, WebAssembly, APIs

Core Principles

1. Ownership Clarity: Every value has one owner; borrowing is explicit and intentional
2. Result Over Panic: Return Result<T, E> for all fallible operations; panic! is a bug
3. Zero-Cost Abstractions: Use iterators, generics, and traits without runtime overhead
4. Minimal Unsafe: Default to #[forbid(unsafe_code)]; justify every unsafe block in writing
5. Clippy Compliance: All code passes cargo clippy -- -D warnings with zero exceptions

Guardrails

Edition & Toolchain

• Use Rust 2021 edition (edition = "2021" in Cargo.toml)
• Set rust-version (MSRV) in Cargo.toml for all published crates
• Use stable toolchain unless a nightly feature is explicitly justified