re: feedback request on linkedin

[waynr]

Here are some notes I jotted down will perusing your code, broken down by "make it easier to use", "make it easier to develop", and "make it easier to distribute". I'll also open a couple quick PRs to address a couple of these points after I open this issue.

make it easier to develop

• main branch should build with stable rust
• put all nightly feature usage into a lightweight "nightly-changes" (or whatever you want to call it) branch
• create sub-crate that offers a nice public library api
• consider using an existing library for command line argument parsing
  • this will reduce the time you spend working on your own custom argument parsing and make it
  • clap to simplify your life when it
• prioritize documenting your types, especially obviously important traits like DataSink and Finalizable
• push docs to docr.rs (once you've written some)
• push crates to crates.io

make it easier to use

• commit to some kind of stable but evolveable command line api
  • main command line api should require few options to get good average use case behaviors
  • make it easy to stray outside the lines with compression, encryption, and network parameters
  • think of the difference between git porcelain and git plumbing
  • flags like --release, --backup, and --check could be subcommands
  • argument parsing should be grouped by applicability to different subcommands/modes
  • subcommands make it easier to extend the main cli with additional high-level behaviors

make it easier to distribute

• look into minimizing binary size
  • adding the following to your Cargo.toml brings the binary size down to ~682KB:

    [profile.release]
    lto = true
    codegen-units = 1
    strip = true

  • allowing for a no_std build could significantly reduce it further (i'm not sure though), would be worth a try
• consider if std is really necessary for all use cases and offer a std feature flag or something (you mentioned a target use case is embedded environments which may not have standard library could be good for embedded systems, but what about embedded systems without access to std?

[waynr]

Just opened #5 and #6