workflow-miner/docs/research-rust-ecosystem.md

Research: Rust Ecosystem & Dependencies

SQLite Access: rusqlite

Winner: rusqlite v0.38

Feature	rusqlite	sqlx
Async	No (sync)	Yes
SQLite-only	Yes	No (multi-DB)
Bundled SQLite	Yes (feature flag)	No
Read-only support	Yes (SQLITE_OPEN_READ_ONLY)	Yes

Why rusqlite:

• Synchronous is fine for a CLI reading a local file
• Connection::open_with_flags(path, OpenFlags::SQLITE_OPEN_READ_ONLY) ensures safety
• features = ["bundled"] includes SQLite 3.49.2 — no system dependency
• Simpler dependency tree than sqlx
• WAL-safe: reading an Atuin DB in WAL mode from a separate process is safe

use rusqlite::{Connection, OpenFlags};

let db = Connection::open_with_flags(
    "~/.local/share/atuin/history.db",
    OpenFlags::SQLITE_OPEN_READ_ONLY | OpenFlags::SQLITE_OPEN_NO_MUTEX,
)?;

Shell Command Parsing

Level 1: Word splitting — shell-words

shell-words v1 — POSIX shell word splitting.

shell_words::split("git commit -m \"fix typo\"")
// → ["git", "commit", "-m", "fix typo"]

Simple, correct, well-maintained. Exactly what we need for command abstraction.

Level 2: Full AST parsing (optional)

Crate	Version	Description	Maturity
brush-parser	0.3.0	Full POSIX/bash tokenizer + parser with AST	Active, part of brush-shell
conch-parser	0.1.1	Shell parser with AST builder	Stale
mystsh	Early	POSIX/bash parser	Newer, active

Level 3: Variable expansion

shellexpand v3.1.1 — tilde and $VAR expansion. 10M+ downloads.

TUI: ratatui

Winner: ratatui v0.30

Library	Stars	Status
ratatui	18.6k	Active, community standard
cursive	~3.8k	Maintained, less active
tui-rs	~10k	Unmaintained (ratatui is the fork)

Why ratatui:

• Immediate-mode rendering (you own the render loop)
• Widgets: Block, Paragraph, List, Table, Chart, BarChart, Tabs, etc.
• Backends: crossterm (default), termion, termwiz
• 100+ third-party widgets via awesome-ratatui
• 60+ FPS with complex layouts
• Since 0.30.0: modular architecture (ratatui-core, ratatui-widgets, ratatui-crossterm)

Relevant widgets for workflow dashboard:

• Table — displaying discovered patterns
• List — navigating workflows
• BarChart / Sparkline — frequency visualization
• Tabs — switching views

CLI Framework: clap

clap v4 with derive feature — standard, ergonomic.

Sequential Pattern Mining

No mature Rust crate exists. Zero repos in Rust on the sequential-pattern-mining GitHub topic.

Recommended: Implement PrefixSpan directly, porting from PrefixSpan-py. ~300-500 lines of Rust.

Justfile Generation

No Rust crate for generating Justfiles. Format is simple enough for string formatting.

Key syntax rules:

• Recipe bodies use spaces (with set indent) or tabs
• Recipe names: lowercase, hyphens allowed
• Variables: name := "value", interpolated with {{name}}
• Dependencies: test: build lint
• Parameters: deploy target="default":
• Shebang recipes: first line #!
• @ prefix suppresses echo
• Validate with just --fmt --check --unstable -f <file>

Recommended Cargo.toml

[workspace.dependencies]
rusqlite = { version = "0.38", features = ["bundled"] }
shell-words = "1"
ratatui = "0.30"
crossterm = "0.28"
chrono = { version = "0.4", features = ["serde"] }
clap = { version = "4", features = ["derive"] }
serde = { version = "1", features = ["derive"] }
serde_json = "1"
serde_yaml = "0.9"
anyhow = "1"
dirs = "6"