Introduction to Ferrilab

Ferrilab is an umbrella project for crates that experiment with reshaping the Rust data model about primitive types. It began with the bitvec crate; as bitvec expanded, it eventually spun off its integer-generalization into funty, and radium was created independently but swiftly brought into the fold.

Ferrilab is currently focused on just these three crates, but may expand in the future as we discover new ideas to try out.

Behind the Name

The primary maintainer, myrrlyn, is from the Great Lakes region of the Americas and the crates here all reshape the fundamental types in the Rust language. We looked for names that had to do with early modern physics, and settled on Enrico Fermi, as he worked in atomic physics, has an eponymous laboratory near Chicago, and Fermilab was a single edit step away from Rust’s mascot.

Plus, bitvec began while myrrlyn was working for the US Government in New Mexico…