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crate2nix

Generating Cargo.nix for multiple fetched sources

NOTE: This is work in progress, see #102, the interface might still change.

crate2nix has convenient support for managing out-of-tree sources: It will manage a nix-generated directory of the source roots for you.

crate2nix will use the supplied Cargo.lock files in the sources to generate the binaries with the versions that the maintainers specified.

Demo

Starting from scratch with an empty directory:

Terminal window
❯ mkdir ripgrep-example


❯ cd ripgrep-example

Adding a crates.io dependency by name and version:

Terminal window
❯ crate2nix source add cratesIo ripgrep 12.0.1
Prefetching https://crates.io/api/v1/crates/ripgrep/12.0.1/download: done.
Added new source: ripgrep 12.0.1 from crates.io: 1arw9pk1qiih0szd26wq76bc0wwbcmhyyy3d4dnwcflka8kfkikx

Adding a git dependency by URL and revision hash:

Terminal window
❯ crate2nix source add git https://github.com/cjbassi/ytop --rev 21cb63f656519b86928fce9522107f78780d6460
Prefetching https://github.com/cjbassi/ytop#21cb63f656519b86928fce9522107f78780d6460: done.
Added new source: https://github.com/cjbassi/ytop#21cb63f656519b86928fce9522107f78780d6460 via git: 1si5cq18qn819v28vfgbrx3fmfgzj4h0z00ga2p0px42q62vrs7q

Listing all our sources:

Terminal window
❯ crate2nix source list
ripgrep ripgrep 12.0.1 from crates.io: 1arw9pk1qiih0szd26wq76bc0wwbcmhyyy3d4dnwcflka8kfkikx


        crate2nix source add cratesIo --name 'ripgrep' 'ripgrep' '12.0.1'


ytop    https://github.com/cjbassi/ytop#21cb63f656519b86928fce9522107f78780d6460 via git: 1si5cq18qn819v28vfgbrx3fmfgzj4h0z00ga2p0px42q62vrs7q


        crate2nix source add git --name 'ytop' 'https://github.com/cjbassi/ytop' --rev 21cb63f656519b86928fce9522107f78780d6460

This also shows the commands with which you could recreate your sources for convenience.

Generating Cargo.nix, prefetching some indirect git dependencies:

Terminal window
❯ crate2nix generate
Fetching sources.
Generated ./crate2nix-sources.nix successfully.
Fetching sources via ./crate2nix-sources.nix fetchedSources: done.
Prefetching    1/2: https://github.com/rust-psutil/rust-psutil#6abe2de4409672c3f42b69db2b1ba45d73e78ee4
Prefetching    2/2: https://github.com/cjbassi/tui-rs#aff0a4c40aff6e0962a2a935d4b21065298e329c
Wrote hashes to ./crate-hashes.json.
Generated ./Cargo.nix successfully.

Building the binaries:

Terminal window
❯ nix build -f Cargo.nix workspaceMembers.ripgrep workspaceMembers.ytop
[93 built, 0.0 MiB DL]

Running the binaries:

Terminal window
❯ ./result-1/bin/ytop --version
ytop 0.5.1
❯ ./result/bin/rg --version
ripgrep 12.0.1
-SIMD -AVX (compiled)
+SIMD +AVX (runtime)

Managing sources in crate2nix.json

Here are some examples for adding sources:

Terminal window
crate2nix source add cratesIo ripgrep 12.0.1
crate2nix source add git https://github.com/kolloch/crate2nix.git --rev 0832e5ac0a2c53a7a99b9b0b2ff2d51828e5cb60
crate2nix source add nix --import ./nix/sources.nix my_crate

If crate2nix.json does not exist yet, it will be created.

As always, you can have a look at all available options and commands by using crate2nix source --help, crate2nix source add --help and so forth.

crate2nix source list shows already configured sources.

crate2nix source remove ripgrep removes the source named ripgrep.

crate2nix generate

crate2nix generate will generally just do the right thing and pick up crate2nix.json file if necessary:

  • Build a crate-sources directory with all of your sources. It uses a generated crate-sources.nix in your project directory.
  • Call cargo metadata individually for all sources and concatenate the results.

What to check into version control

For building the binaries, Cargo.nix is sufficient. But everyone regenerating it will appreciate if you also check in

  • crate2nix.json (the source configuration)
  • crate-hashes.json (the hashes for packages not in the lockfile)

The generated crate-sources* files should go into .gitignore or similar:

crate-sources*

  • crate-sources.nix is the temporary nix expression to download the sources.
  • crate-sources is the temporary result symlink to the downloaded sources.

Feature resolution

Note that features in crate2nix are resolved at build time so that every dependency is build only with the features necessary for the specific binary. This is probably what you want because it can prevent build problems. Even though, features in rust are meant to be additive, in reality they are often not.