For the web-based everything notebook that I’m working on, I’ve been writing backend hookups to various programming REPLs, including IPython and Gorilla. I wanted to be able to evaluate rust code as well in this notebook environment, and so I set about writing a simple server that would compile up a string in rust when asked. This proved do have a couple of gotchas, so I thought I’d air my thoughts here.
For the impatient, here’s the code. Just beware of the caveat at the bottom of this post.
Using librustc
The current librustc API doesn’t have a nice, simple “here’s the string, compile it please” method, so that’s what I wrote. Here’s the basic signature:
pub fn compile_string(input: String, output: Path, sysroot: Option<Path>)
// example usage:
let src = "fn main() { println!("Hello!") }".to_string();
let output = Path::new("/tmp/hello".to_string());
let sysroot = Path::new("/usr/local/");
compile_string(src, output, Some(sysroot));
// now `/tmp/hello` is ready to go!
The sysroot from the above definition has to do with the location of the compiled rust libraries (given that there’s not a fool-proof way of automatically knowing where these would be). If the libraries are located in /usr/local/lib/rustlib, then sysroot is /usr/local/. Here are the headers we’ll need:
extern crate rustc;
extern crate rustc_trans;
extern crate syntax;
use rustc_trans::driver::driver::{FileInput, StrInput, Input, compile_input};
use rustc_trans::session::config::{basic_options, build_configuration, OutputTypeExe};
use rustc_trans::session::{build_session, Session};
use syntax::diagnostics;```
There are several crates involved here; `librustc` is currently in the process of being refactored, so the locations of some of these items might change.
The function that is exposed by `librustc` is:
```rust
compile_input(sess: Session, cfg: CrateConfig,
input: &Input, outdir: &Option<Path>,
output: &Option<Path>, addl_plugins: Option<Plugins>)
This requires the creation of a basic session and accompanying config, in addition to the input and the output that we provide.
/* Build a basic session object to output a compiled binary. */
fn basic_sess(sysroot: Path) -> Session {
let mut opts = basic_options();
// the only modifications that need to be made to the session options are
// output_types (otherwise no binary is created),
// and maybe_sysroot (otherwise the rust libs cannot be found)
opts.output_types = vec![OutputTypeExe];
opts.maybe_sysroot = Some(sysroot);
// copied from librustc
let descriptions = diagnostics::registry::Registry::new(&rustc::DIAGNOSTICS);
let sess = build_session(opts, None, descriptions);
sess
}```
And now the final pieces; a few helper functions to expose a simple interface:
```rust
/*
* Compile a string to rust! Takes an input string of source code and an output
* path to write to, and optionally a sysroot. If no sysroot is given, a default
* of /usr/local/ is used.
*/
pub fn compile_string(input: String, output: Path, sysroot: Option<Path>) {
compile_simple(StrInput(input), output, sysroot)
}
pub fn compile_file(input: Path, output: Path, sysroot: Option<Path>) {
compile_simple(FileInput(input), output, sysroot)
}
fn compile_simple(input: Input, output: Path, sysroot: Option<Path>) {
let sess = basic_sess(match sysroot {
Some(path) => path,
None => Path::new("/usr/local/")
});
let cfg = build_configuration(&sess);
compile_input(sess,
cfg,
&input,
&None, // output directory (unused when there's an output file)
&Some(output), // output file
None);
}```
Now you're all set to be compiling rust from rust!
### Traits
For bonus points, let's make this a little more rusty be taking advantage of `Trait`s. This will allow us to do away with the type-specialized functions `compile_string` and `compile_file`.
```rust
trait Compileable {
fn to_input(self) -> Input;
}
impl Compileable for String {
fn to_input(self) -> Input {
StrInput(self)
}
}
impl Compileable for Path {
fn to_input(self) -> Input {
FileInput(self)
}
}
fn compile<T: Compileable>(input: T, output: Path, sysroot: Option<Path>) {
compile_simple(&input.to_input(), output, sysroot)
}
This way we can call compile(mystring, ...) or compile(mypath, ...), and the compiler will translate the calls to compile::<String>(mystring, ...) and compile::<Path>(mypath, ...). Awesome!
The Gotcha
As it happens, there’s a bug in librustc that prevents your from compiling multiple files in a row – there’s some global state being stored somewhere, and I don’t as yet know how to reset it (github issue). So, for the moment, I’ve resorted to just creating a subprocess calling the binary rustc, which is far from ideal, but works.
Here’s the code from this post all together in a single file: compile_inline.rs.