ADR-0001 — Rust as core language

Status: accepted · Date: 2026-09

Context

PHOINIX parses attacker-controlled binary structures from arbitrary media, must run natively on Windows and Linux, and needs predictable performance on multi-terabyte sources.

Decision

The recovery engine, CLI and privileged service are written in stable Rust (edition 2024). Filesystem parsers prefer explicit parsing over heavy abstraction. Async runtimes are not used in parsing crates.

Consequences

Memory and bounds safety by default; unsafe is confined to platform/FFI crates and must be documented.
C libraries (TSK, libewf) are reachable through FFI adapters when needed.
Contributors need Rust; the desktop front-end (Tauri + React) speaks to the engine over typed IPC rather than sharing a language.