cross

“Zero setup” cross compilation and “cross testing” of Rust crates

This project is developed and maintained by the cross-rs team. It was previously maintained by the Rust Embedded Working Group Tools team. New contributors are welcome! Please join our Matrix room and say hi.

`cross test`ing a crate for the aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu target

Features

• cross will provide all the ingredients needed for cross compilation without touching your system installation.

• cross provides an environment, cross toolchain and cross compiled libraries, that produces the most portable binaries.

• “cross testing”, cross can test crates for architectures other than i686 and x86_64.

• The stable, beta and nightly channels are supported.

Dependencies

See our Getting Started guide for detailed installation instructions.

• rustup

• A Linux kernel with binfmt_misc support is required for cross testing.

One of these container engines is required. If both are installed, cross will default to docker.

• Docker. Note that on Linux non-sudo users need to be in the docker group or use rootless docker. Read the container engine install guide for the required installation and post-installation steps. Requires version 20.10 (API 1.40) or later.

• Podman. Requires version 3.4.0 or later.

Installation

cargo install cross --git https://github.com/cross-rs/cross

It's also possible to directly download the pre-compiled release binaries or using cargo-binstall.

Usage

cross has the exact same CLI as Cargo but relies on Docker or Podman. For Docker, you'll have to start the daemon before you can use it.

# (ONCE PER BOOT, on Linux)
# Start the Docker daemon, if it's not already running using systemd
# on WSL2 and other systems using SysVinit, use `sudo service docker start`.
$ sudo systemctl start docker

# MAGIC! This Just Works
$ cross build --target aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu

# EVEN MORE MAGICAL! This also Just Works
$ cross test --target mips64-unknown-linux-gnuabi64

# Obviously, this also Just Works
$ cross rustc --target powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu --release -- -C lto

Additional documentation can be found on the wiki.

Configuration

You have three options to configure cross. All of these options use the TOML format for configuration and the possible configuration values are documented here.

Option 1: Configuring cross directly in your Cargo.toml

You can directly set configuration values in your Cargo.toml file, under the [package.metadata.cross] table, i.e. key prefix. An example config snippet would look like this:

[package.metadata.cross.target.aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu]
xargo = false
image = "test-image"
runner = "custom-runner"

Option 2: Configuring cross via a Cross.toml file

You can put your configuration inside a Cross.toml file in your project root directory.

Option 3: Using CROSS_CONFIG to specify the location of your configuration

By setting the CROSS_CONFIG environment variable, you can tell cross where it should search for the config file. This way you are not limited to a Cross.toml file in the project root.

Custom Docker images

cross provides default Docker images for the targets listed below. However, it can't cover every single use case out there. For other targets, or when the default image is not enough, you can use the target.{{TARGET}}.image field in Cross.toml to use custom Docker image for a specific target:

[target.aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu]
image = "my/image:tag"

In the example above, cross will use a image named my/image:tag instead of the default one. Normal Docker behavior applies, so:

• Docker will first look for a local image named my/image:tag

• If it doesn't find a local image, then it will look in Docker Hub.

• If only image:tag is specified, then Docker won't look in Docker Hub.

• If only tag is omitted, then Docker will use the latest tag.

Dockerfiles

If you're using a custom Dockerfile, you can use target.{{TARGET}}.dockerfile to automatically build it

[target.aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu]
dockerfile = "./path/to/where/the/Dockerfile/resides"

cross will build and use the image that was built instead of the default image.

It's recommended to base your custom image on the default Docker image that cross uses: ghcr.io/cross-rs/{{TARGET}}:{{VERSION}} (where {{VERSION}} is cross's version). This way you won't have to figure out how to install a cross C toolchain in your custom image.

FROM ghcr.io/cross-rs/aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu:latest

RUN dpkg --add-architecture arm64 && \
    apt-get update && \
    apt-get install --assume-yes libfoo:arm64

If you want cross to provide the FROM instruction, you can do the following

ARG CROSS_BASE_IMAGE
FROM $CROSS_BASE_IMAGE

RUN ...

Pre-build hook

cross enables you to add dependencies and run other necessary commands in the image before using it. This action will be added to the used image, so it won't be ran/built every time you use cross.

[target.aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu]
pre-build = ["dpkg --add-architecture arm64 && apt-get update && apt-get install --assume-yes libfoo:arm64"]

Docker in Docker

When running cross from inside a container, cross needs access to the hosts docker daemon itself. This is normally achieved by mounting the docker daemons socket /var/run/docker.sock. For example:

$ docker run -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v .:/project \
  -w /project my/development-image:tag cross build --target mips64-unknown-linux-gnuabi64

The image running cross requires the rust development tools to be installed.

With this setup cross must find and mount the correct host paths into the container used for cross compilation. This includes the original project directory as well as the root path of the parent container to give access to the rust build tools.

To inform cross that it is running inside a container set CROSS_CONTAINER_IN_CONTAINER=true.

A development or CI container can be created like this:

FROM rust:1

# set CROSS_CONTAINER_IN_CONTAINER to inform `cross` that it is executed from within a container
ENV CROSS_CONTAINER_IN_CONTAINER=true

# install `cross`
RUN cargo install cross

...

Limitations: Finding the mount point for the containers root directory is currently only available for the overlayfs2 storage driver. In order to access the parent containers rust setup, the child container mounts the parents overlayfs. The parent must not be stopped before the child container, as the overlayfs can not be unmounted correctly by Docker if the child container still accesses it.

Explicitly choose the container engine

By default, cross tries to use Docker or Podman, in that order. If you want to choose a container engine explicitly, you can set the binary name (or path) using the CROSS_CONTAINER_ENGINE environment variable.

For example in case you want use Podman, you can set CROSS_CONTAINER_ENGINE=podman.

Passing environment variables into the build environment

By default, cross does not pass most environment variables into the build environment from the calling shell. This is chosen as a safe default as most use cases will not want the calling environment leaking into the inner execution environment. There are, however, some notable exceptions: most environment variables cross or cargo reads are passed through automatically to the build environment.

In the instances that you do want to pass through environment variables, this can be done via build.env.passthrough in your Cross.toml:

[build.env]
passthrough = [
    "RUST_BACKTRACE",
    "RUST_LOG",
    "TRAVIS",
]

To pass variables through for one target but not others, you can use this syntax instead:

[target.aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu.env]
passthrough = [
    "RUST_DEBUG",
]

For more detailed documentation on which environment variables are automatically passed to the build environment, see Environment Variable Passthrough on our wiki.

Unstable Features

Certain unstable features can enable additional functionality useful to cross-compiling. Note that these are unstable, and may be removed at any time (particularly if the feature is stabilized or removed), and will only be used on a nightly channel.

• CROSS_UNSTABLE_ENABLE_DOCTESTS=true: also run doctests.

Mounting volumes into the build environment

In addition to passing environment variables, you can also specify environment variables pointing to paths which should be mounted into the container:

[target.aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu.env]
volumes = [
    "BUILD_DIR",
]

Use Xargo instead of Cargo

By default, cross uses xargo to build your Cargo project only for all non-standard targets (i.e. something not reported by rustc/rustup). However, you can use the build.xargo or target.{{TARGET}}.xargo field in Cross.toml to force the use of xargo:

# all the targets will use `xargo`
[build]
xargo = true

Or,

# only this target will use `xargo`
[target.aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu]
xargo = true

xargo = false will work the opposite way (pick cargo always) and is useful when building for custom targets that you know to work with cargo.

Supported targets

A target is considered as “supported” if cross can cross compile a “non-trivial” (binary) crate, usually Cargo, for that target.

Testing support (cross test) is more complicated. It relies on QEMU emulation, so testing may fail due to QEMU bugs rather than bugs in your crate. That said, a target has a ✓ in test column of the table below if it can run the compiler-builtins test suite.

Also, testing is very slow. cross test runs units tests sequentially because QEMU gets upset when you spawn multiple threads. This means that, if one of your unit tests spawns threads, then it's more likely to fail or, worst, never terminate.

[1] libc = bionic; Only works with native tests, that is, tests that do not depends on the Android Runtime. For i686 some tests may fails with the error assertion failed: signal(libc::SIGPIPE, libc::SIG_IGN) != libc::SIG_ERR, see issue #140 for more information.

[2] No std component available.

[3] For some *BSD and Solaris targets, the libc column indicates the OS release version from which libc was extracted.

[4] libc = newlib

[5] Must change image = "ghcr.io/cross-rs/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu:main-centos" in Cross.toml for [target.x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] to use the CentOS7-compatible target.

[6] libc = emscripten and GCC = clang

[7] Must change image = "ghcr.io/cross-rs/aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu:main-centos" in Cross.toml for [target.aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu] to use the CentOS7-compatible target.

Additional Dockerfiles for other targets can be found in cross-toolchains. These include MSVC and Apple Darwin targets, which we cannot ship pre-built images of.

Debugging

QEMU_STRACE (v0.1.9+)

You can set the QEMU_STRACE variable when you use cross run to get a backtrace of system calls from “foreign” (non x86_64) binaries.

$ cargo new --bin hello && cd $_

$ QEMU_STRACE=1 cross run --target aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu
9 brk(NULL) = 0x0000004000023000
9 uname(0x4000823128) = 0
(..)
9 write(1,0xa06320,14)Hello, world!
 = 14
9 sigaltstack(0x4000823588,(nil)) = 0
9 munmap(0x0000004000b16000,16384) = 0
9 exit_group(0)

Minimum Supported Rust Version (MSRV)

This crate is guaranteed to compile on stable Rust 1.64.0 and up. It might compile with older versions but that may change in any new patch release.

Some cross-compilation targets require a later Rust version, and using Xargo requires a nightly Rust toolchain.

License

Licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT License (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Contribution

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.

Code of Conduct

Contribution to this crate is organized under the terms of the Rust Code of Conduct, the maintainer of this crate, the cross-rs team, promises to intervene to uphold that code of conduct.