Governance Best Practices

A condensed summary of the 25 most important governance practices for Rust fleets - drawn from every page in this section.

Pin toolchain in rust-toolchain.toml: Fleet on Rust 1.97.0, edition 2024 - Edition & Toolchain Upgrades.
rustfmt + clippy -D warnings on main: Style not debated in review - Coding Standards & API Guidelines.
Rust API guidelines for public crates: Naming, errors, docs with examples.
Domain crates forbid framework imports: axum/sqlx stay in infra/binary layers.
thiserror libs, anyhow binaries: Clear error boundaries.
Deny unwrap on request path: Clippy or crate policy.
Two reviewers for unsafe: SAFETY comments mandatory - Unsafe & Dependency Governance.
Miri on FFI crates nightly: Catch UB before prod.
cargo audit on every main build: CVE SLA documented.
cargo deny license/bans: No surprise GPL conflicts.
cargo vet for production deps: Evidence trail for new crates.
SBOM on releases: CycloneDX with image/CLI - Contribution Guidelines.
ADRs in docs/adr/: Supersede, never delete - Documentation Conventions.
Runbooks in repo with last_verified: Quarterly drill updates.
README: owner, on-call, deploy order: Onboarding in minutes.
PR template: intent, risk, rollback: Same fleet template.
CODEOWNERS on migrations and unsafe: Right reviewers automatically.
Spikes 2-3 days with criteria: Before adopting new crates - Spikes, PoCs & Adopting New Crates.
PoC != production: Hardening checklist before merge.
MSRV bump is comms event: CHANGELOG + consumer notice.
Edition migration dedicated train: No mixed drive-by edition fixes.
SME site updated with fleet standards: Linked from CONTRIBUTING.
Lessons-learned catalog maintained: Post-mortem feeds LL entries.
Career rubric uses impact evidence: Not trivia - Career Growth.
Governance retro yearly: Prune rules that no longer pay rent.

FAQs

How strict for small startup?

Adopt 1-10 first; add vet/SBOM as customers require.

Exceptions process?

ADR with expiry date; not silent allow.

Who owns governance?

Platform/guild stewards; squads follow, propose changes via PR.

Open source vs internal?

Stricter license and API semver on published crates.

Enforcement without trust loss?

Automate objective rules; discuss subjective design in review.

Polars/ML governance?

Same audit path; add data handling review for PII transforms.

Wasm governance?

Size CI gates + host contract versioning in ADR.

Audit failing dep?

Patch, replace crate, or documented risk acceptance with expiry.

Onboarding governance?

Week 1: standards doc + top 10 lessons-learned + clippy baseline PR.

Measure governance ROI?

CFR, CVE MTTR, onboarding time, repeat incident rate.

Coding Standards & API Guidelines - conventions
Unsafe & Dependency Governance - security
Edition & Toolchain Upgrades - toolchain
Leadership Best Practices - people
Delivery Best Practices - shipping

Stack versions: This page was written for Rust 1.97.0 (edition 2024), Tokio 1.x, Axum 0.8, serde 1.0, sqlx 0.8, clap 4, and Polars 0.46+.

Governance Best Practices

A condensed summary of the 25 most important governance practices for Rust fleets - drawn from every page in this section.

Pin toolchain in rust-toolchain.toml: Fleet on Rust 1.97.0, edition 2024 - Edition & Toolchain Upgrades.

rustfmt + clippy -D warnings on main: Style not debated in review - Coding Standards & API Guidelines.

Rust API guidelines for public crates: Naming, errors, docs with examples.

Domain crates forbid framework imports: axum/sqlx stay in infra/binary layers.

thiserror libs, anyhow binaries: Clear error boundaries.

Deny unwrap on request path: Clippy or crate policy.

Two reviewers for unsafe: SAFETY comments mandatory - Unsafe & Dependency Governance.

Miri on FFI crates nightly: Catch UB before prod.

cargo audit on every main build: CVE SLA documented.

cargo deny license/bans: No surprise GPL conflicts.

cargo vet for production deps: Evidence trail for new crates.

SBOM on releases: CycloneDX with image/CLI - Contribution Guidelines.

ADRs in docs/adr/: Supersede, never delete - Documentation Conventions.

Runbooks in repo with last_verified: Quarterly drill updates.

README: owner, on-call, deploy order: Onboarding in minutes.

PR template: intent, risk, rollback: Same fleet template.

CODEOWNERS on migrations and unsafe: Right reviewers automatically.

Spikes 2-3 days with criteria: Before adopting new crates - Spikes, PoCs & Adopting New Crates.

PoC != production: Hardening checklist before merge.

MSRV bump is comms event: CHANGELOG + consumer notice.

Edition migration dedicated train: No mixed drive-by edition fixes.

SME site updated with fleet standards: Linked from CONTRIBUTING.

Lessons-learned catalog maintained: Post-mortem feeds LL entries.

Career rubric uses impact evidence: Not trivia - Career Growth.

Governance retro yearly: Prune rules that no longer pay rent.

FAQs

How strict for small startup?

Adopt 1-10 first; add vet/SBOM as customers require.

Exceptions process?

ADR with expiry date; not silent allow.

Who owns governance?

Platform/guild stewards; squads follow, propose changes via PR.

Open source vs internal?

Stricter license and API semver on published crates.

Enforcement without trust loss?

Automate objective rules; discuss subjective design in review.

Polars/ML governance?

Same audit path; add data handling review for PII transforms.

Wasm governance?

Size CI gates + host contract versioning in ADR.

Audit failing dep?

Patch, replace crate, or documented risk acceptance with expiry.

Onboarding governance?

Week 1: standards doc + top 10 lessons-learned + clippy baseline PR.

Measure governance ROI?

CFR, CVE MTTR, onboarding time, repeat incident rate.

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