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Note getting started developing Rust
This page describes how to download and build the Rust compiler and associated tools and libraries from the current git sources. If you're more interested in using Rust than in hacking on the Rust compiler, you might prefer to install a released version instead of following these instructions.
Version numbers listed here are "what we're using"; the code may well work with earlier versions of these tools, but we don't know minimum version requirements.
- A recent Linux, OS X 10.6 or later, Win32 or FreeBSD system
- 1 GB RAM
- Python 2.x (version 2.7 is known to work)
- GNU make 3.81
- git 1.7
- g++ 4.4 at least on Linux, 4.5 on Windows, and the 4.x gcc in Apple's SDK for OS X.
- curl
- Valgrind 3.5 or later (recommended, but not required for Linux)
- pandoc 1.8 at least (optional, if you wish to build HTML docs)
- pdflatex (optional, if you wish to build PDF docs)
- ccache (optional)
You can install all the prerequisites you need to build Rust by running
sudo apt-get install python make git g++ curl valgrind pandoc texlive-latex-recommended
Incidentally, the pandoc that's packaged for certain Linux distributions (Ubuntu, for instance) is older than 1.8, so in order to build HTML docs on Ubuntu, you'll need to install pandoc manually according to the installation instructions.
For Ubuntu 11.10 there seems to be a conflict with texlive-latex-base, per #1692.
We recommend developing under MSYS and MinGW using their auto-installer. Be careful with versions: the version dated 20110802 is known to work so long as you use the built-in package list, and wind up with gcc 4.5; later versions including gcc 4.7 are known not to work due to a bug with LLVM, and possibly other reasons; we're unclear on the cause.
Once installed, we tend to work inside the MSYS shell.
For Git, we recommend MsysGit and if you use that you will want to put the git binary path after the MinGW path. So add a line like the following to your .bashrc:
export PATH=$PATH:/c/Program\ Files/Git/bin
If while building you receive an error that libpthread-2.dll is not found, you need to install the libpthread-2.8.0-3-mingw32-dll-2.tar.lzma package. It seems this must be installed by hand, as far as I can tell:
cd /mingw; lzma -d -c /path/to/downloaded/libpthread-2.8.0-3-mingw32-dll-2.tar.lzma | tar xf -
Rust builds on FreeBSD but is not officially supported. It is only known to work on 9.0-RELEASE. You'll need some prerequisites:
pkg_add -r git gmake libexecinfo libunwind
The gcc included with FreeBSD is old, so your best bet is to run the configure script with --enable-clang. Installing gcc 4.6 can also work. Build with gmake instead of make.
git clone git://github.com/mozilla/rust.git
cd rust
mkdir build
cd build
../configure
make check
This will build and test the compiler, standard libraries, and supporting tools.
Note: You can use make -j8 (if you have an 8-core machine) to speed up the build (at least the LLVM part and the tests). On Linux or OS X, if you have Valgrind installed, the tests will run slowly because they are running under Valgrind. If you define CFG_DISABLE_VALGRIND=1 in your build environment or run configure with the --disable-valgrind flag, you can see the tests running at full speed.
If you are going to be hacking on the Rust compiler itself then it is recommended that you configure with --disable-optimize, since this will greatly reduce up your compilation time.
There's a quick guide to the source of the compiler in src/librustc/README.txt. You should look through it if you're going to be contributing.
Syntax highlighting for vim is included in the Rust repository, under src/etc/vim and for emacs under src/etc/emacs. Other editors may also be supported.
We use the GitHub issue tracker to track bugs and feature requests in Rust. If you prefer not to use the standard GitHub issue tracker, there's a secondary front-end that is quite a bit more responsive.
To get an idea of where we're going, see the development roadmap.
The way most people seem to get involved is by simply trying to write Rust code. Inevitably you will hit a bug or missing feature, at which point you may feel compelled to write a patch.
Another way to get involved is to look through the issue tracker for issues labeled with "E-easy", "I-enhancement", "I-wishlist", and/or "A-an-interesting-project". Unassigned bugs are always fair game. Assigned bugs that don't seem to be getting worked on actively can be fair game, but always check with the bug owner first in that case. Also see the development policy.
Outstanding bugs or feature requests in Rust often have a corresponding test in the test suite that doesn't yet pass. One good way to jump into Rust development is to look for files in the test/run-pass directory containing the string xfail-test. Those tests all correspond to bugs that need to be fixed or features that someone needs to finish.
The source is also littered with hundreds of comments marked with 'FIXME' and 'TODO'. In Rust, FIXME comments come with an issue number; sometimes these refer to issues that may be resolved easily.
If in doubt, ask on IRC. Somebody will surely have a task that needs doing.
Join irc.mozilla.org #rust for real-time discussion of Rust development. We try to remain on that channel during working hours in UTC-7 (US Pacific).
Join the mailing list for longer conversations.
In both cases, please follow the conduct guidelines on the development policy.