Building Rust

I’ve compiled the Rust compiler a lot of times now. That’s necessary because the AVR fork of Rust is not officially supported, and the fork does not distribute a release.

It’s been a huge pain, and very often I find myself unable to compile it for one reason or another (wrong branch, mismatching compiler versions, etc.). To relieve myself (and hopefully others), I’ve created a Docker image designed with the ability to reliably compile Rust. It’s on Docker Hub.

https://hub.docker.com/r/jonahbron/rust-builder

It’s super easy, and requires no setup besides cloning the Rust repository of your choice. If you’re in the clone, simply run:

$ docker run --mount "type=bind,src=$PWD,dst=/rust" --rm jonahbron/rust-builder

This will download the container image from Docker Hub and run your source’s x.py script. Once it’s completed, you’ll have a nice shiny build of the Rust compiler.

However, I’ve taken it one additional step further. To make it especially easy to build AVR Rust (which is what I specifically want), I’ve created a slightly more specialized derivitive container image.

https://hub.docker.com/r/jonahbron/avr-rust-builder

This image is even easier to use. You don’t even need to clone the code repository, the image has already done it for you. Simply run:

$ mkdir -p build && docker run --mount "type=bind,src=$PWD/build,dst=/rust/build" jonahbron/avr-rust-builder

This will create a build directory and send the build output there. If you find yourself needing to build Rust from source, I hope you find these tools as helpful as I do. You can always double-check the Dockerfiles in the images’ respective (public) Github repos to make sure everything’s above board.