Abscissa is a microframework for building Rust applications (either CLI tools or network/web services), aiming to provide a large number of features with a minimal number of dependencies, and with a strong focus on security.

Documentation

Features

• command-line option parsing: simple declarative option parser based on (i.e. forked from) gumdrop. The option parser in Abcissa contains numerous improvements which provide better UX and tighter integration with the other parts of the framework (e.g. overriding configuration settings using command-line options).
• configuration: declarative global configuration support using an RwLock on a lazy_static. Simple parsing of TOML configurations to serde-parsed global structures which can be dynamically updated at runtime.
• error handling: generic Error type based on the failure crate, and a unified error-handling subsystem.
• logging: uses the log and simplelog crates to automatically configure application-level logging, presently to standard output or files.
• secrets management: the (optional) secrets module includes a Secret type which derives serde's Deserialize and can be used to represent secret values parsed from configuration files or elsewhere (e.g. credentials loaded from the environment or network requests)
• shell interactions: support for colored terminal output (with color support autodetection). Useful for Cargo-like status messages with easy-to-use macros.

Depencencies

or: "Know Your Dependencies"

One of Abscissa's primary goals is to maximize functionality while minimizing the number of dependencies. Abscissa is used in a number of high-security contexts, and as such we view each additional dependency as additional attack surface and therefore a potential liability. We have therefore been very conscientious about the dependencies we use and will not add additional dependencies without due consideration.

Here are all of Abscissa's transitive dependencies:

• † semver-parser has one usage of unsafe which is not compiled by Abscissa.
• ‡ term has one usage of unsafe on Windows. Other platforms do not use unsafe.
• § winapi also pulls in either winapi-i686-pc-windows-gnu or winapi-x86_64-pc-windows-gnu which are omitted for brevity.

Build / Development Dependencies

Dependency Relationships

The table below should help answer questions as to why a particular crate is an Abscissa dependency and whether or not it is optional. Abscissa uses cargo features to allow parts of it you aren't using to be easily disabled, so you only compile the parts you need.

• § winapi also pulls in either winapi-i686-pc-windows-gnu or winapi-x86_64-pc-windows-gnu which are omitted for brevity.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q1: Why is it called "abscissa"?

A1: An abscissa represents the elevation of a point above the y-axis. In that regard, "Abscissa" can be thought of as a pun about getting off the ground, or elevating your project.

The word "abscissa" is also the key to the Kryptos K2 panel.

License

The abscissa crate is distributed under the terms of the Apache License (Version 2.0).

Copyright © 2018 iqlusion

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Parts of this code were taken from the following projects, which have agreed to license their code under the Apache License (Version 2.0):

• Cargo
• gumdrop