alksocks/docs/architecture/decisions/009-feature-gates.md

ADR-009: Feature-Gate Layout — local and the Composition Boundary

Status

Accepted (2026-09-20, Phase 1; the wasm-clean default-crate invariant is the alk* family posture — AGENTS.md convention 4). Amended 2026-09-21 (pre-decomposition): the vendor's net gate dissolves under ADR-011's extraction amendment — the vendor is wasm-clean by construction; features collapse to local + composed; see §Amendment.

Context

The default crate must compile to wasm32-unknown-unknown (the alktty/alktunnels precedent; the wasm shape is a sandboxed SOCKS5 consumer — pure byte framing, no local sockets needed client-side; phase-0 OQ-SK-04's analysis). Two groups of platform-specific or sibling-dependent code need gating:

1. The crate's own local backends (dial/listen/egress providers touching real sockets — ADR-008's local variants).
2. The composed providers (the alktunnels-composed egress/accept helpers — ADR-008's composed variants), which need the alktunnels dependency.

The vendor originally contributed a third gate: its kernel-net region was to ride a default-on net feature (POC #4's measured shape, ~120 cfg lines across 5 files). ADR-011's 2026-09-21 amendment pins the vendor as extraction — the kernel-net region is not copied, so that gate no longer exists (see §Amendment). POC #4's gate map survives as the extraction recipe, not as in-tree cfg.

Decision

• The default crate is protocol-only and wasm-clean. Module placement per overview.md: protocol, wire, producer, consumer, vendor modules at the core; backend modules feature-gated, never imported by the protocol layer.
• The default build has no net feature: the extracted vendor contains zero kernel-net code, so the wasm-clean subset is the whole crate — there is nothing to gate (ADR-011 §Amendment).
• local (default-off): the crate's first-party local backends — the TCP dial, the UDP egress socket, the BIND listener, and the front doors (the consumer's ssh -D local exposure; the producer's local backend). Brings tokio/net + socket2 into the graph. Non-wasm by design (enabling it on wasm is a build error, the alktty posture).
• composed (default-off): the composed providers over alktunnels 0.2.0 (direct-op egress, bind-first listen accept) — the only feature that adds the alktunnels dependency. The protocol layer never references alktunnels types; the composed module does, injected at the assembly layer (ADR-004/ADR-008).
• tokio stays default-features = false with the wasm-clean subset (rt, sync, io-util, macros, time) — never features = ["full"] (AGENTS.md convention 4); net-shaped additions ride local alone.

Amendment (2026-09-21, pre-decomposition — the vendor's net gate dissolves)

The original decision carried a third feature — net (default-on), the vendored subset's kernel-net gate, with local implying it. ADR-011's extraction amendment dissolves it:

• The vendor is an extraction of the T-generic inventory only; the kernel-net region (run_tcp_proxy, run_udp_proxy*, the legacy Socks5Server/Incoming API, Socks5Datagram's kernel path, the DNS-resolve helper, the net-only tests), the socks4 module, and the legacy Config/Authentication layer are not copied into the tree — the extraction is wasm-clean by construction, with no in-tree cfg gate.
• Features collapse to two: local (first-party socket providers + front doors, ADR-008; brings tokio/net + socket2 into the graph itself) and composed (the alktunnels providers). local no longer implies a separate net feature — it is the sole gate for socket/platform I/O.
• POC #4's gate map survives as the extraction recipe (its ungated inventory is what to copy), not as in-tree cfg.
• The wasm verification is a hard gate with no feature toggles: cargo check --target wasm32-unknown-unknown and native --no-default-features both compile the same complete crate.

Consequences

• Wasm consumers (the sandboxed adapter story — a product input, nothing waits on it) build the default crate clean; the protocol substance is the wasm-relevant surface.
• The verification commands cover the gates: cargo test (default), cargo test --all-features, and both wasm checks (cargo check/clippy --target wasm32-unknown-unknown) — the structural guard for the invariant.
• The vendor's carried changes (BIND, new_reply publication) live in the extracted region where they touch codecs/typestate; nothing vendored is gated — the only feature-gated socket code is the crate's own first-party local module.

References

• OQ-SK-04 (resolved: the extracted-and-forked base — ADR-011/ ADR-013), OQ-SK-01/03/08 (the providers the features gate)
• POC #4 poc-connect-wasm-findings.md (the measured gate — now the extraction recipe), alktty's local feature (the posture precedent), alktunnels ADR-004 + overview.md (the same feature split)