apple-cf 0.7.0

Safe Rust bindings for Apple's shared Core* frameworks (CoreFoundation, CoreMedia, CoreVideo, CoreGraphics, IOSurface, Dispatch).
Documentation

apple-cf

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

Status: v0.6.2 adds an exhaustive raw module alongside the ergonomic safe wrappers, closing the remaining audited gaps across CoreFoundation, CoreMedia, CoreVideo, IOSurface, and Dispatch. See COVERAGE.md for the framework summary and COVERAGE_AUDIT.md for the full symbol audit.

What's in the box

Module Framework Feature flag Status
cf CoreFoundation values, collections, property lists, locale/formatter helpers, runtime primitives — ✅
raw Exhaustive low-level CoreFoundation/CoreMedia/CoreVideo/IOSurface/Dispatch bindings — ✅
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
    ├── exhaustive raw C bindings in `apple_cf::raw`
    ├── 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 = "0.6.2"

Or pick only the frameworks you need:

[dependencies]
apple-cf = { version = ">=0.6.2, <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 15 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, timer sources, and raw main-queue access
  • CMTimeRange, CMTimebase, CMMetadataFormatDescription, and low-level CMTag/CMSync coverage through apple_cf::raw
  • CVBuffer, CVImageBuffer, CVPixelBuffer, CVMetalTextureCache, and the remaining CVMetal entry points through apple_cf::raw
  • Exhaustive low-level constants / inline helpers surfaced by apple_cf::raw

CVDisplayLink remains 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.