cargo-nbuild

A cargo builder that uses the buildRustCrate from the nix package manager.

This yields the following benefits:

• Sandbox builds: A malicious dependency in project A cannot alter the filesystem or inject source code into libraries that will affect the build of another project B.
• Shared cache: If project A has a dependency on some crate, let's say tokio, with features macros and rt, then this builder will cache each dependency individually. So if project B also uses tokio with the same features and version, then the tokio dependency will not be rebuild.
• Reproducible: Given the same version and targets, any project will build exactly the same on different machines.

Install

cargo install cargo-nbuild

:warning: The nix package manager needs to be installed on your system.

:bulb: You also need to enable the new nix command in the user specific configuration or system wide configuration.

Usage

From a Rust project run

cargo nbuild

Missing

This builder is still in early days and is missing features

• Choosing target: like with cargo build --target ...
• Choosing workspace package: builds only work when inside the workspace member, and not when you are at the workspace root. Ie the cargo build --package ... equavalent is missing.
• Remote builds: nix supports remote builds which are not currently possible
• Custom rust version: it should be possible to change the version of rustc used for the compiles
• ... other cargo build options