systemconfiguration-rs

Safe Rust bindings for Apple’s SystemConfiguration.framework on macOS.

Version 0.2.0 switches the crate to a screencapturekit-rs-style Swift bridge: Cargo builds a small SwiftPM static library, Rust owns opaque retained handles, and the public API stays ergonomic on the Rust side. If you still need low-level C symbols, enable the raw-ffi feature.

Covered areas

systemconfiguration-rs now ships safe wrappers for the logical areas requested for the 0.2.0 migration:

DynamicStore
NetworkConfiguration overview helpers
Reachability / NetworkReachability
Preferences
Schema
NetworkService
NetworkSet
NetworkInterface
NetworkProtocol
ConsoleUser
CaptiveNetwork

See COVERAGE.md for the per-header audit, including the APIs that are still partial or intentionally skipped on macOS.

Installation

[dependencies]
systemconfiguration-rs = "0.2"

Enable raw C access when needed:

[dependencies]
systemconfiguration-rs = { version = "0.2", features = ["raw-ffi"] }

The crate name is systemconfiguration-rs; the Rust library name is systemconfiguration.

Quick start

use systemconfiguration::{DynamicStore, NetworkConfiguration, Reachability};

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let store = DynamicStore::new("com.example.systemconfiguration-rs")?;
    println!("computer_name={:?}", store.computer_name());

    let reachability = Reachability::with_name("apple.com")?;
    println!("apple.com => {}", reachability.flags()?);

    let overview = NetworkConfiguration::overview()?;
    println!(
        "interfaces={} services={} current_set={:?}",
        overview.interface_count,
        overview.service_count,
        overview.current_set_name
    );

    Ok(())
}

Highlights

Swift bridge primary implementation with one Swift file per logical area
Safe Rust wrappers for property lists, preferences sessions, services, sets, interfaces, protocols, reachability, captive-network helpers, and console-user lookup
raw-ffi feature preserving direct access to the underlying C APIs already declared by the crate
11 numbered examples under examples/ and 11 per-area smoke tests under tests/

Architecture

build.rs builds swift-bridge/Package.swift into a static library and links it into the Rust crate.
Swift bridge entry points are @_cdecl functions returning C primitives or opaque retained pointers.
Rust owns those handles via OwnedHandle in src/bridge.rs and releases them through shared bridge retain/release functions.
Some structured results are serialized as JSON in Swift and decoded with serde on the Rust side.

Examples

Run all examples exactly as used during verification:

for ex in examples/*.rs; do
  cargo run --example "$(basename "$ex" .rs)"
done

Handy entry points:

cargo run --example 01_dynamic_store_overview
cargo run --example 03_network_reachability
cargo run --example 06_network_services
cargo run --example 11_captive_network

API notes

Writing to the dynamic store or preferences can require elevated privileges; read-only smoke examples are used where the host environment denies mutation.
Apple deprecates SCNetworkReachability* in favor of Network.framework, but these APIs remain wrapped because they are still widely deployed.
CaptiveNetwork does not wrap CNCopyCurrentNetworkInfo, because that API is unavailable on modern macOS and generally entitlement-gated.
Schema::catalog() currently returns a curated high-value subset of SCSchemaDefinitions.h; see COVERAGE.md for details.

License

Licensed under either of:

MIT license (LICENSE-MIT)
Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE)

systemconfiguration-rs 0.2.0