# oconnor663/duct.rs

a Rust library for running child processes

Repository: https://github.com/oconnor663/duct.rs
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/ductrs
Language: Rust
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2025-11-18T17:22:18+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 56/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 52, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3847, "days_push": 288, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1040, forks 44 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:20.450006+00:00)

## What it is
Duct is a Rust library for running child processes with shell-like pipelines and IO redirection while avoiding common cross-platform pitfalls. It provides a fluent API for building commands, piping them together, and capturing or streaming output with sensible error handling.

## Use cases
- run child processes from Rust code
- build shell-like pipelines programmatically
- capture stdout of a command as a string
- pipe one command's output into another
- merge stderr into stdout and read incrementally
- treat non-zero exit codes as errors by default

## When to choose
- you need to spawn and compose subprocesses in Rust without shell quoting bugs
- you want portable process pipelines across Linux, macOS, and Windows
- you prefer ergonomic command execution over std::process boilerplate

## When to avoid
- you need advanced shell features like globbing or environment variable expansion
- you only need a single simple subprocess and std::process suffices
- you need asynchronous process management with tokio

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: developer-tools, concurrency, error-handling
- domain: developer-tools
- platform: rust, cross-platform
- tags: child-processes, process-pipelines, shell-alternative, io-redirection, command-line, automation

## Member repositories
- oconnor663/duct.rs (main) score 56

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:20.450006+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T07:03:31.496576+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/oconnor663/duct.rs (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:20.450006+00:00, sha bbb69b6c8bf8)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.