apple-cf

Safe, dependency-free Rust bindings for Apple's shared Core* frameworks — the foundation underneath the doom-fish macOS Rust suite.

Status: v0.6.1 closes the highest-value audit gaps with CFSet, CFPropertyList, CMMetadataFormatDescription, and dispatch async/apply helpers. See COVERAGE.md for the framework summary and COVERAGE_AUDIT.md for the full symbol audit and deferred long tail.

What's in the box

Module	Framework	Feature flag	Status
`cf`	CoreFoundation values, collections, property lists, locale/formatter helpers, runtime primitives	—	✅
`cg`	CoreGraphics value types + bitmap drawing wrappers	`cg`	✅
`iosurface`	IOSurface (zero-copy GPU buffers, multi-planar formats)	`iosurface`	✅
`dispatch_queue`	Dispatch queues, async/apply helpers, groups, semaphores, timer sources	`dispatch`	✅
`cm`	`CMTime`, `CMTimeRange`, `CMTimebase`, `CMSampleBuffer`, `CMBlockBuffer`, `CMFormatDescription`, `CMMetadataFormatDescription`	`cm`	✅
`cv`	`CVBuffer`, `CVImageBuffer`, `CVPixelBuffer`, `CVPixelBufferPool`, `CVMetalTextureCache`	`cv`	✅
`utils`	Shared FFI helpers (always on)	—	✅

Why this crate exists

Every doom-fish crate that wraps a media-adjacent Apple framework needs the same primitives — CFString, CGRect, CVPixelBuffer, IOSurface, dispatch queues, time values. Instead of re-vendoring those inside every crate (and drifting), this crate owns them once.

Safe Rust wrappers
    ├── CoreFoundation / Dispatch / CoreMedia / CoreVideo ergonomic APIs
    ├── direct C FFI for value-only primitives where appropriate
    └── Swift @_cdecl bridge for reference-counted / callback-heavy surfaces

Requirements

macOS 13.0+
Xcode toolchain (Swift 5.9+); Command Line Tools alone is not enough — xcrun --sdk macosx --show-sdk-version must succeed
Apple Silicon or Intel Mac

Installation

[dependencies]
apple-cf = "0.6.1"

Or pick only the frameworks you need:

[dependencies]
apple-cf = { version = ">=0.6.1, <0.7", default-features = false, features = ["cg", "cm", "cv", "dispatch", "iosurface"] }

Quick examples

Build CoreFoundation values and collections

use apple_cf::cf::{CFArray, CFString};

let first = CFString::new("first");
let second = CFString::new("second");
let array = CFArray::from_values(&[&first, &second]);
assert_eq!(array.len(), 2);

Create a timer-backed dispatch source

use apple_cf::dispatch_queue::DispatchSource;
use std::thread;
use std::time::Duration;

let source = DispatchSource::timer(Duration::from_millis(5), Duration::from_millis(1));
source.resume();
thread::sleep(Duration::from_millis(20));
source.cancel();
assert!(source.fire_count() > 0);

Allocate an IOSurface-backed `CVPixelBuffer`

use apple_cf::cv::CVPixelBuffer;

let pixel_buffer = CVPixelBuffer::create(16, 16, 0x4247_5241)
    .expect("pixel buffer");
assert_eq!(pixel_buffer.width(), 16);

Architecture

This crate uses the same Swift-bridge pattern as the rest of the doom-fish crates:

swift-bridge/Sources/<Framework>Bridge/ exposes thin @_cdecl entry points
src/ffi/*.rs declares the matching extern "C" bindings
src/<framework>/ provides the safe Rust API on top

The Rust crate has zero runtime dependencies.

Examples and tests

This release ships 14 numbered examples plus dedicated smoke tests for:

CoreFoundation primitives, collections, property lists, resources, runtime helpers
Dispatch queues, dispatch_async, dispatch_async_and_wait, dispatch_apply, groups, semaphores, and timer sources
CMTimeRange, CMTimebase, and CMMetadataFormatDescription
CVBuffer, CVImageBuffer, CVPixelBuffer, and CVMetalTextureCache

CVDisplayLink remains out of scope and is tracked as exempt in the audit because Apple deprecated the family on macOS 15.

License

Licensed under either of Apache-2.0 or MIT at your option.

apple-cf 0.6.1