Magic File Type Detection Ecosystem

A safe Rust implementation of file type detection with 99% compatibility with libmagic rule format

This ecosystem provides a complete, memory-safe alternative to the traditional libmagic implementation, while maintaining near-full compatibility with existing rule files.

🔥 Key Advantages

• 99% libmagic Compatible - Uses the same rule format and syntax
• Memory Safe - Pure Rust implementation with no unsafe code
• High Performance - Optimized parsing and detection
• Embeddable - Compile rules directly into your binary
• Extensible - Easy to add new file type detection rules

📦 Crates Overview

1. pure-magic

Core libmagic-compatible detection engine

• 99% compatible with original libmagic rule syntax
• Safe Rust implementation (no unsafe)
• Powerful APIs:
  • File type detection
  • MIME type identification
  • Access rule strength
  • Polyglot file detection

2. magic-embed

Procedural macro for embedding rule databases

• Compiles libmagic-compatible rules at build time
• Use it to embeds a compiled database of magics in your binary

3. magic-db

Precompiled libmagic-compatible rule database

• Contains magic rules
• Ready-to-use with zero configuration

🚀 Getting Started: using wiza CLI

Installation

cargo install wiza

Basic file identification

$ wiza /bin/file
/bin/file source:elf strength:431 mime:application/x-pie-executable magic:ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV)

📜 Rule Compatibility

This project has been built to provide the maximum level of compatibility with existing libmagic rules. So most of the rules you will find in the file repository will directly be compatible with this project. You just need to be aware of the current f few incompatibilities:

• Ternary printf format is not supported: The following extract from ELF detection will not be supported, however it can be fixed trivially without relying on ternary formatting.

0	name		elf-le
[...]
>16	leshort		3		${x?pie executable:shared object},
!:mime	application/x-${x?pie-executable:sharedlib}

• DER Rule Limitation: The only major incompatibility is with ASN.1/DER encoding rules, which require specialized test operations not yet implemented in pure-magic. All other rule types work identically to libmagic.

📚 Documentation

• pure-magic API Docs - Core detection library
• magic-embed Docs - Embedding macro
• magic-db Docs - Precompiled database
• Rule Syntax Guide - libmagic-compatible rule format

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions to improve libmagic compatibility:

1. Open an issue with a description of the problem
2. Include sample files that demonstrate the issue
3. Suggest specific rule modifications if possible

You can also contribute by:

• Improving existing rules in the src/magdir directory
• Adding support for new file formats
• Helping optimize rule performance or accuracy

📄 License

All components are licensed under GPL-3.0.

🙌 Acknowledgments

• Thanks to all the people behind file, project which served as a foundation for this work.
• Thanks to @adulau for supporting this work.
• Thanks to all my colleagues at CIRCL who listened to me (without complaining) talking about pure-magic almost every single day since I started this project.