smartcols-sys: Unsafe Rust bindings for libsmartcols

libsmartcols helps format tables when structured data is output.

This crate is Linux-specific. Building it for non-Linux platforms, or for the Linux kernel, results in an empty crate.

This crate links to libsmartcols, and requires it to be installed. See below for example installation instructions.

Installing libsmartcols

This crate links to libsmartcols, and requires it to be installed.

The library, its C header files, and the clang compiler need to be installed on the build machine. On Debian, for example, one can install that as follows:

sudo apt-get install clang libsmartcols-dev

If the library is linked dynamically (most typical configuration), then it needs to be installed on the target computer in order to run the resulting program. On Debian, for example, one can install it as follows:

sudo apt-get install libsmartcols1

Supported environment variables

This crate depends on some environment variables, and variants of those. For each environment variable (e.g., CC), the following are the accepted variants of it:

• <var>_<target>, e.g., CC_aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu.
• <var>_<target-with-underscores>, e.g., CC_aarch64_unknown_linux_gnu.
• TARGET_<var>, e.g., TARGET_CC.
• <var>, e.g., CC.

The following environment variables (and their variants) affect how this crate is built:

• SMARTCOLS_STATIC
• SMARTCOLS_PATH
• SMARTCOLS_INCLUDE_DIR
• SMARTCOLS_LIB_DIR
• SYSROOT
• CC
• CFLAGS

Dynamic or static linking

This crate links to libsmartcols dynamically if possible, except when targeting platforms based on the musl C library.

This behavior can be changed either by setting the environment variable SMARTCOLS_STATIC to 1, or by enabling the crate feature static. If both are defined, then the value of SMARTCOLS_STATIC takes precedence.

Setting SMARTCOLS_STATIC to 0 mandates dynamic linking.

Finding smartcols library and headers

By default, this crate finds smartcols headers and library based on the default target C compiler.

This behavior can be changed by:

• Either defining the environment variable SMARTCOLS_PATH to the path of a directory containing the sub-directories include and lib where the headers and library are installed.
• Or by defining one or both of the environment variables SMARTCOLS_INCLUDE_DIR and SMARTCOLS_LIB_DIR to paths to the directories where headers and library are present. If SMARTCOLS_PATH is also defined, then SMARTCOLS_INCLUDE_DIR and SMARTCOLS_LIB_DIR take precedence.

Depending on this crate

This crate provides the following variables to other crates that depend on it:

• DEP_SMARTCOLS_INCLUDE: Path of the directory where library C header files reside.
• DEP_SMARTCOLS_LIB: Path of the directory where the library binary resides.

Documentation-only build mode

The documentation-only build mode allows building documentation even if libsmartcols and its headers are unavailable. To build in this mode, set the environment variable DOCS_RS to 1:

env DOCS_RS=1 cargo doc --open

The generated documentation is based on libsmartcols version 2.40.4.

⚠️ The generated crate might be unusable in this mode.

Versioning

This project adheres to Semantic Versioning. The CHANGELOG.md file details notable changes over time.