A forking problem! Or a Case Study in Architectural Pivots

Carl Nelson

— 2 min read

This post outlines the technical evolution of an Internet Archive download tool, starting from an existing Rust CLI and culminating in a dual-project system. It's a case study in recognizing when a monolithic architecture, even in a powerful language like Rust, should be split to better serve different application goals: a high-performance CLI and a user-friendly GUI.

Phase 1: Evolving the Core Rust CLI

The project began with a fork of ia-get, a Rust-based tool for the Internet Archive. The existing codebase was a solid foundation, but it had critical limitations that required a complete overhaul of its core logic:

  • Checksum Validation: The original hashing implementation was unreliable.
  • Path Length: It lacked long-path support, a significant issue for Windows users dealing with complex archives.

My initial focus was an intensive refactoring process within the Rust ecosystem. Over several iterations, I rewrote the application's core to be more robust and feature-rich, adding functionality essential for power users:

  • Concurrent downloads to maximize bandwidth.
  • Glob pattern matching (--glob) for precise file selection.
  • Resume functionality (--resume) for interrupted downloads.
  • A --dry-run flag for safe testing of commands.

This iterative process transformed the tool into a mature, high-performance CLI application that successfully addressed the original project's shortcomings.

Phase 2: The Unified Backend Challenge

With a stable CLI, the next goal was a GUI and an Android app. The logical next step seemed to be architecting the refactored Rust core as a shared library that could power all frontends. I planned to use Flutter/Dart for the GUI and communicate with the Rust core via a Foreign Function Interface (FFI).

The theoretical advantages were compelling:

  • Single Source of Truth: All core logic would remain within the well-tested Rust codebase.
  • Performance: The GUI would benefit from the speed of the Rust backend.
  • Consistent Behavior: All frontends would be functionally identical.

However, this architecture introduced significant development friction. The complexity of the FFI bridge, managing memory between the Dart VM and Rust, and the convoluted build toolchain for cross-compiling the Rust library slowed progress immensely. The cost of maintaining this bridge outweighed the benefits of code reuse.

Phase 3: A Pragmatic Pivot to a Dual-Project System

The integration overhead made it clear that a monolithic backend was not the right fit. I pivoted and decoupled the project into two separate, specialized applications, allowing each to leverage the strengths of its respective technology stack.

ia-get-cli

The Rust application was refined back into a pure CLI tool. Its purpose is now laser-focused on performance, power, and scriptability. It excels as a lightweight, server-side utility for automating large-scale archival tasks. 🤓

ia-helper

A new, dedicated Flutter application was created for the GUI. By implementing the business logic directly in Dart, it fully utilizes the Flutter ecosystem for state management, UI development, and package management. This drastically simplified development and accelerated progress on user-facing features. The roadmap for ia-helper is to become a full-featured management tool for the Internet Archive, including uploading and seeding.

Conclusion and Key Takeaways

This project's evolution highlights a key engineering principle: the ideal architecture is the one that boosts productivity.

  • A single codebase is not always the most efficient solution, especially when bridging disparate ecosystems like Rust and Dart/Flutter.
  • Refactoring and evolving a tool within its native language (Rust) is effective for creating a specialized, high-performance application.
  • For user-centric applications, leveraging a framework's native ecosystem (Flutter/Dart) often provides a smoother path to building a rich user experience.

Ultimately, decoupling the projects led to two stronger, more focused products and a more efficient development workflow.

I will continue to work on these implementations, with a strong focus on getting this application onto the playstore. And I hope to write an update with how playstore submission and other trials went.

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