Rustius

Fast, minimal, and secure desktop client for SSH, SFTP, and RDP.

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Rustius is a lightweight, cross-platform remote management client built for developers and system administrators who want a fast, clean workspace without the memory bloat of Electron or cluttered legacy interfaces.

Powered by a native Rust backend and an OS Webview frontend with Svelte 5, Rustius ships as a single compact binary with instant startup, tabbed workflows, and first-class portability.

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Key Features

🖥️ Modern Terminal & SSH

• Full Terminal Emulation: Built with @xterm/xterm with web link detection, search, and native resize reflow.
• Pure-Rust SSH Engine: Powered by russh with background connection keep-alive, session recovery, and fast crypto.
• Local Shell Support: Spawn local PowerShell, Command Prompt, or bash instances alongside remote SSH sessions via portable-pty.
• In-Session Documentation: Slide-out Markdown notes drawer to keep connection runbooks, checklists, and one-click copyable command snippets right beside active sessions.
• Tab State Persistence: Terminal scrollback buffers and geometry are preserved across tab switches.

📂 Dual-Mode SFTP File Transfer

• In-Terminal Side Navigator: Toggle a live SFTP sidebar directly inside active SSH sessions (MobaXterm style).
• Directory Follow / Sync: Automatically tracks your active shell directory as you navigate in the terminal (cd), keeping remote files in sync with your command line.
• Dedicated Dual-Pane Manager: Full-screen dual-pane view for bulk local-to-remote and remote-to-local file transfers.
• File Operations: Upload, download, create folders, rename, delete, and download directly to your system Downloads folder.

🪟 Remote Desktop (RDP)

• Dual RDP Engines:
  • IronRDP (Default): Pure-Rust, memory-safe, cross-platform RDP client rendered directly into an accelerated HTML5 Canvas. Supports dirty-rect rendering, FastPath mouse/keyboard input, and zero native window hacks.
  • FreeRDP: Native Direct3D child-window overlay engine with hardware acceleration.
• Dynamic Resolution & Smart Sizing: Presets for Fit Viewport, 1080p, 1440p, 4K, and Ultrawide resolutions.
• Desktop DPI Scaling: Custom client-side DPI scaling (100%–300%) with automatic high-DPI calculation for razor-sharp text and icons on 2K/4K displays.
• Docked or Detached Mode: Keep sessions seamlessly embedded inside tabs or pop them out into detached native windows for multi-monitor setups.
• Roadmap Note (MS-RDPEGFX): The MS-RDPEGFX graphics pipeline is currently optional and disabled by default due to an upstream RemoteFX progressive tile decoder issue in IronRDP (rfx progressive decode failed). Standard planar bitmap decoding is active and stable. When upstream resolves the progressive wavelet decoder, EGFX will be enabled by default to unlock ClearCodec text sharpening, H.264 video streaming, and true 60 FPS frame-pacing.

🔐 Secure Credential Management & Profiles

• Reusable Credential Profiles: Define admin or service credentials once and link them across multiple SSH, SFTP, or RDP hosts.
• OS Keyring Integration: Stores passwords, private key passphrases, and secrets in your platform's native secure store (Windows Credential Manager, macOS Keychain, Linux Secret Service).
• Encrypted Local Vault: Optional encrypted storage fallback using Argon2id key derivation and ChaCha20-Poly1305 / AES-GCM encryption.
• Multiple Auth Methods: Supports SSH passwords, private key files (with or without passphrase), and interactive terminal authentication.

🔄 1-Click Migration & Importers

• MobaXterm Import: Import server hierarchies and session trees directly from .mxtsessions files.
• mRemoteNG Import: Import encrypted or plaintext connection trees directly from confCons.xml.

🧳 Portable Mode (Zero-Installation)

Rustius follows VS Code-style portable data resolution:

• Place a data/ or rustius-data/ folder next to rustius.exe (or create a .portable marker file), and the application runs in Portable Mode—storing all sessions, configurations, and state entirely on the portable drive.
• Without a portable folder, Rustius neatly saves settings in your standard OS user profile directory (%APPDATA%\rustius on Windows, ~/.config/rustius on Linux, ~/Library/Application Support/rustius on macOS).

🎨 Clean, Minimalist Interface

• Geist Design Language: High-contrast, typography-driven dark interface free of unnecessary visual noise.
• Frameless Window: Custom native window controls with fluid window dragging and smooth minimize/maximize behaviors.
• Organized Workspace: Group connections into hierarchical folders with custom environment tags (Production, Staging, Development).

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Architecture

Rustius is structured as a Rust workspace with clean separation between protocol crates and the desktop application:

rustius/
├── crates/
│   ├── rustius-core       # Config storage, connection models, vault & session importers
│   ├── rustius-ssh        # SSH sessions (russh) & SFTP operations (russh-sftp)
│   ├── rustius-rdp        # RDP session orchestration and FreeRDP embedding
│   └── rustius-terminal   # Cross-platform local PTY management (portable-pty)
├── src-tauri/             # Tauri v2 application shell, commands, and window orchestration
└── src/                   # Svelte 5 frontend (SvelteKit SPA, xterm.js, UI components)

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Prerequisites

To build Rustius from source, make sure you have:

• Node.js (v20 or later) & npm
• Rust (stable toolchain, 1.77+ recommended)
• Platform Dependencies:
  • Windows: Microsoft Visual Studio C++ Build Tools & WebView2 (installed by default on Windows 10/11)
  • Linux: libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev, build-essential, curl, wget, file, libssl-dev, libayatana-appindicator3-dev, librsvg2-dev, patchelf
  • macOS: Xcode Command Line Tools

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Building from Source

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/jlmanohar/rustius.git
   cd rustius

2. Install frontend dependencies:

   npm install

3. Run in development mode:

   cargo tauri dev

   This starts the Vite dev server and launches the Tauri desktop application with hot-reloading.

4. Build the production release:

   # Package the desktop client and installers
   cargo tauri build

   Compiles an optimized native binary and packages installer bundles (MSI / NSIS on Windows) into target/release/bundle/.

Note

Always use cargo tauri build rather than raw cargo build to ensure the compiled frontend assets are embedded directly into the final standalone executable.

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Configuration & Storage

Rustius stores your connections, folders, and preferences in a clean config.toml file.

Mode	Location
Portable	<exe-directory>/data/config.toml or <exe-directory>/rustius-data/config.toml
Windows	%APPDATA%\rustius\config.toml
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/rustius/config.toml
Linux	~/.config/rustius/config.toml or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/rustius/config.toml

Sensitive credentials (passwords, private key passphrases) are never stored in plaintext inside config.toml; they are safely delegated to your system's OS Credential Store.

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License

This project's source code is licensed under the MIT License.

The Rustius name, logos, mascots, and associated brand assets are reserved and protected under copyright and trademark law. See LICENSE for details.