cargo-binstall/SUPPORT.md

Support for cargo binstall

binstall works with existing CI-built binary outputs, with configuration via [package.metadata.binstall] keys in the relevant crate manifest. When configuring binstall you can test against a local manifest with --manifest-path=PATH argument to use the crate and manifest at the provided PATH, skipping crate discovery and download.

To get started, check the default first, only add a [package.metadata.binstall] section to your Cargo.toml if the default does not work for you.

As an example, the configuration would be like this:

[package.metadata.binstall]
pkg-url = "{ repo }/releases/download/v{ version }/{ name }-{ target }-v{ version }.{ archive-format }"
bin-dir = "{ name }-{ target }-v{ version }/{ bin }{ binary-ext }"
pkg-fmt = "tgz"

With the following configuration keys:

• pkg-url specifies the package download URL for a given target/version, templated
• bin-dir specifies the binary path within the package, templated (with an .exe suffix on windows)
• pkg-fmt overrides the package format for download/extraction (defaults to: tgz)

pkg-url and bin-dir are templated to support different names for different versions / architectures / etc. Template variables use the format { VAR } where VAR is the name of the variable, with the following variables available:

• name is the name of the crate / package
• version is the crate version (per --version and the crate manifest)
• repo is the repository linked in Cargo.toml
• bin is the name of a specific binary, inferred from the crate configuration
• target is the rust target name (defaults to your architecture, but can be overridden using the --target command line option if required()
• archive-format is the filename extension of the package archive format
• binary-ext is the string .exe if the target is for Windows, or the empty string otherwise
• format is a soft-deprecated alias for archive-format in pkg-url, and for binary-ext in bin-dir; in the future this may warn at install time.

pkg-url, pkg-fmt and bin-dir can be overridden on a per-target basis if required, for example, if your x86_64-pc-windows-msvc builds use zip archives this could be set via:

[package.metadata.binstall.overrides.x86_64-pc-windows-msvc]
pkg-fmt = "zip"

Defaults

By default, binstall will try all supported package format and would have bin-dir set to "{ name }-{ target }-v{ version }/{ bin }{ binary-ext }" (where bin is the cargo binary name and binary-ext is .exe on windows and empty on other platforms).

All binaries must contain a folder named { name }-{ target }-v{ version } (so that prior binary files are not overwritten when manually executing tar -xvf ...).

The default value for pkg-url will depend on the repository of the package.

It is setup to work with github releases, gitlab releases, bitbucket downloads and source forge downloads.

If your package already uses any of these URLs, you shouldn't need to set anything.

The URLs are derived from a set of filenames and a set of paths, which are "multiplied together": every filename appended to every path. The filenames are:

• { name }-{ target }-{ version }.{ archive-format }
• { name }-{ target }-v{ version }.{ archive-format }
• { name }-{ version }-{ target }.{ archive-format }
• { name }-v{ version }-{ target }.{ archive-format }
• { name }-{ version }-{ target }.{ archive-format }
• { name }-v{ version }-{ target }.{ archive-format }
• { name }-{ target }.{ archive-format } ("versionless")

The paths are:

for GitHub

• { repo }/releases/download/{ version }/
• { repo }/releases/download/v{ version }/

for GitLab

• { repo }/-/releases/{ version }/downloads/binaries/
• { repo }/-/releases/v{ version }/downloads/binaries/

Note that this uses the Permanent links to release assets feature of GitLab EE: it requires you to create an asset as a link with a filepath, which, as of writing, can only be set using GitLab's API.

for BitBucket

• { repo }/downloads/

Binaries must be uploaded into the project's "Downloads" page on BitBucket.

Also note that as there are no per-release downloads, the "versionless" filename is not considered here.

for SourceForge

• { repo }/files/binaries/{ version }
• { repo }/files/binaries/v{ version }

The URLs also have /download appended as per SourceForge's schema.

Binary must be uploaded to the "File" page of your project, under the directory binaries/v{ version }.

Others

For all other situations, binstall does not provide a default pkg-url and you need to manually specify it.

QuickInstall

QuickInstall is an unofficial repository of prebuilt binaries for Crates, and binstall has built-in support for it! If your crate is built by QuickInstall, it will already work with binstall. However, binaries as configured above take precedence when they exist.

Examples

For example, the default configuration (as shown above) for a crate called radio-sx128x (version: v0.14.1-alpha.5 on x86_64 linux) would be interpolated to:

• A download URL of https://github.com/rust-iot/rust-radio-sx128x/releases/download/v0.14.1-alpha.5/rust-radio-sx128x-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-v0.14.1-alpha.5.tgz
• Containing a single binary file rust-radio-sx128x-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-v0.14.1-alpha.5/rust-radio-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
• Installed to$HOME/.cargo/bin/rust-radio-sx128x-v0.14.1-alpha.5
• With a symlink from $HOME/.cargo/bin/rust-radio-sx128x

If the package name does not match the crate name

As is common with libraries / utilities (and the radio-sx128x example), this can be overridden by specifying the pkg-url:

[package.metadata.binstall]
pkg-url = "{ repo }/releases/download/v{ version }/sx128x-util-{ target }-v{ version }.{ archive-format }"

Which provides a download URL of: https://github.com/rust-iot/rust-radio-sx128x/releases/download/v0.14.1-alpha.5/sx128x-util-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-v0.14.1-alpha.5.tgz

If the package structure differs from the default

Were the package to contain binaries in the form name-target[.exe], this could be overridden using the bin-dir key:

[package.metadata.binstall]
bin-dir = "{ bin }-{ target }{ binary-ext }"

Which provides a binary path of: sx128x-util-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu[.exe]. It is worth noting that binary names are inferred from the crate, so long as cargo builds them this should just work.