A guide to how rustc works and how to contribute to it.
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bors cd733e506e Auto merge of #135695 - Noratrieb:elf-raw-dylib, r=bjorn3
Support raw-dylib link kind on ELF

raw-dylib is a link kind that allows rustc to link against a library without having any library files present.
This currently only exists on Windows. rustc will take all the symbols from raw-dylib link blocks and put them in an import library, where they can then be resolved by the linker.

While import libraries don't exist on ELF, it would still be convenient to have this same functionality. Not having the libraries present at build-time can be convenient for several reasons, especially cross-compilation. With raw-dylib, code linking against a library can be cross-compiled without needing to have these libraries available on the build machine. If the libc crate makes use of this, it would allow cross-compilation without having any libc available on the build machine. This is not yet possible with this implementation, at least against libc's like glibc that use symbol versioning. The raw-dylib kind could be extended with support for symbol versioning in the future.

This implementation is very experimental and I have not tested it very well. I have tested it for a toy example and the lz4-sys crate, where it was able to successfully link a binary despite not having a corresponding library at build-time.

I was inspired by Björn's comments in https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/bundle-zig-cc-in-rustup-by-default/22096/27
Tracking issue: #135694

r? bjorn3

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README.md

CI

This is a collaborative effort to build a guide that explains how rustc works. The aim of the guide is to help new contributors get oriented to rustc, as well as to help more experienced folks in figuring out some new part of the compiler that they haven't worked on before.

You can read the latest version of the guide here.

You may also find the rustdocs for the compiler itself useful. Note that these are not intended as a guide; it's recommended that you search for the docs you're looking for instead of reading them top to bottom.

For documentation on developing the standard library, see std-dev-guide.

Contributing to the guide

The guide is useful today, but it has a lot of work still to go.

If you'd like to help improve the guide, we'd love to have you! You can find plenty of issues on the issue tracker. Just post a comment on the issue you would like to work on to make sure that we don't accidentally duplicate work. If you think something is missing, please open an issue about it!

In general, if you don't know how the compiler works, that is not a problem! In that case, what we will do is to schedule a bit of time for you to talk with someone who does know the code, or who wants to pair with you and figure it out. Then you can work on writing up what you learned.

In general, when writing about a particular part of the compiler's code, we recommend that you link to the relevant parts of the rustc rustdocs.

Build Instructions

To build a local static HTML site, install mdbook with:

> cargo install mdbook mdbook-linkcheck2 mdbook-toc mdbook-mermaid

and execute the following command in the root of the repository:

> mdbook build --open

The build files are found in the book/html directory.

We use mdbook-linkcheck2 to validate URLs included in our documentation. Link checking is not run by default locally, though it is in CI. To enable it locally, set the environment variable ENABLE_LINKCHECK=1 like in the following example.

$ ENABLE_LINKCHECK=1 mdbook serve

Table of Contents

We use mdbook-toc to auto-generate TOCs for long sections. You can invoke the preprocessor by including the <!-- toc --> marker at the place where you want the TOC.

Synchronizing josh subtree with rustc

This repository is linked to rust-lang/rust as a josh subtree. You can use the following commands to synchronize the subtree in both directions.

You'll need to install josh-proxy locally via

cargo +stable install josh-proxy --git https://github.com/josh-project/josh --tag r24.10.04

Older versions of josh-proxy may not round trip commits losslessly so it is important to install this exact version.

Pull changes from rust-lang/rust into this repository

  1. Checkout a new branch that will be used to create a PR into rust-lang/rustc-dev-guide
  2. Run the pull command
    $ cargo run --manifest-path josh-sync/Cargo.toml rustc-pull
    
  3. Push the branch to your fork and create a PR into rustc-dev-guide

Push changes from this repository into rust-lang/rust

  1. Run the push command to create a branch named <branch-name> in a rustc fork under the <gh-username> account
    $ cargo run --manifest-path josh-sync/Cargo.toml rustc-push <branch-name> <gh-username>
    
  2. Create a PR from <branch-name> into rust-lang/rust