Rust Systems for Systems Programming

Module 7: Concurrency and synchronization

• Threads and message passing with channels
• Shared state with Mutex, RwLock, and Condvar
• Send and Sync marker traits and what they imply
• Guidelines for avoiding deadlocks and priority inversions

Module 8: Interfacing with C

• FFI building blocks repr, extern blocks, and linking
• Passing strings, slices, and ownership across the boundary
• Wrapping unsafe pointers with safe abstractions
• Header first workflow bindgen and manual bindings

Module 9: Debugging and troubleshooting

• Readable errors, backtraces, and logging with env filters
• Using cargo tools for test, fmt, clippy, and audit
• Debugging sessions with lldb or gdb basics
• Common pitfalls borrow checker, lifetimes, and trait bounds

Module 10: Performance and allocation awareness

• Measuring with cargo bench and simple timers
• Understanding inlining, monomorphization, and trait objects
• Minimizing allocations and copies small vector and cow patterns
• File and network IO strategies blocking vs async at a glance

Module 11: Building a small systems service

• Designing a minimal daemon or CLI subcommand style
• Configuration, arguments, and feature flags
• Graceful shutdown and signal handling
• Error taxonomy for stable operations

Module 12: Packaging and next steps

• Release profiles and symbol choices
• Cross compilation targets and musl builds
• Organizing a safe unsafe boundary checklist
• Pathways to async, embedded, and advanced interop