SAP Cloud Foundry Buildpack for Rust

This buildpack deploys a Rust application to a Cloud Foundry environment.

Although this buildpack was developed specifically for the deployment of Rust programs to an SAP Cloud Foundry environment, it does not contain any SAP-specific dependencies. Therefore, it should be suitable for deploying a Rust program to any Cloud Foundry environment; however, this aspect has not been tested.

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Assumptions

The objective of this buildpack is to compile your Rust program such that it will run as an application in your Cloud Foundry space. Consequently, your Cargo.toml file should specify a single package that compiles to a single binary.

Adding configuration to Cargo.toml that causes cargo build to create multiple binaries will not have the desired outcome, because the release phase of this buildpack must supply Cloud Foundry with the name of the single binary to be executed — and that binary is identified by the package name.

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Usage

Create a .cfignore file

In your repo's root directory (I.E. the directory from which you run the command cf push), create a .cfignore file that contains at least the following two entries:

target
Cargo.lock

During the execution of cf push, it is redundant to copy the contents of either the target/ directory tree or the file Cargo.lock, as these will both be rebuilt.

Without a .cfignore file, the cf push command will be very slow and may well fail entirely with the very vague error message Package failed to process correctly after upload.

manifest.yml

In the manifest.yml of your application, point to this buildpack and allocate sufficient memory for compilation to succeed.

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applications:
- name: my-cool-rust-project
  memory: 4096M
  buildpacks:
  - https://github.com/lighthouse-no/cf-buildpack-rust

Cargo.toml

In your application's Cargo.toml file, make sure the name property is listed immediately after the [package] section on line 2 of the file.

[package]
name = "my-cool-rust-app"
version = "0.1.0"
authors = ["Chris Whealy <chris@lighthouse.no>"]
edition = "2021"

This is because the buildpack's release phase assumes that the name property can be found exactly on line 2.

Configuration Files

Filename	Purpose
RustToolchain	If present, contains the name of the required Rust toolchain: E.G. nightly
RustConfig	If present, contains as many cargo environment variables and their values as needed
CFLogBuildPhases	If present, switches on verbose build phase logging

See below for more details about these files.

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Configuring the Rust Toolchain

In the vast majority of cases, you will want your application built using the stable Rust channel. If this is the case, then no explicit configuration is needed.

However, should you wish to use either the nightly channel, or pin your application to a specific Rust version, then create a file called RustToolchain in your repo's top level directory containing the specific toolchain name you wish to use. For example:

$ cat RustToolchain
nightly

If the RustToolchain file exists but is empty, it will be ignored. You should only add a single value to this file.

See Rust toolchains for more details about Rust channels.

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Configuring Cargo Environment Variables

Any environment variables used by cargo can be defined in a file called RustConfig in your repo's top level directory. For instance:

$ cat RustConfig
RUST_LIB_BACKTRACE=1
RUST_BACKTRACE=full
RUST_LOG=warn

If the RustConfig file exists but is empty, it will be ignored. Otherwise, it should contain as many cargo environment variables as needed.

WARNING
Do not set your own value for CARGO_TARGET_DIR as the buildpack's finalize phase defines its own value for this variable.

RustConfig may also contain additional variables used by this buildpack:

RustConfig Variable	Default Value	Description
RUST_CARGO_BUILD_PROFILE	release	Rust build profile
RUST_CARGO_BUILD_FLAGS	""	Optional build flags. For example "--features feature1 feature2"

See Rust Environment Variables for more details.

Build Profiles

For all build profiles other than release, it is good practice to add an explicit profile definition in Cargo.toml; for example:

[profile.my_dev]
inherit = "release"
opt-level = 1
debug = true
debug-assertions = true
overflow-checks = true
lto = false
panic = 'unwind'
incremental = true
codegen-units = 256
rpath = false

Then add the line RUST_CARGO_BUILD_PROFILE=my_dev to RustConfig.

Build Command

If $RUST_CARGO_BUILD_PROFILE == release, then the following build command will be used:

cargo build --release $RUST_CARGO_BUILD_FLAGS

For any other value of $RUST_CARGO_BUILD_PROFILE, this command will be used:

cargo build --profile $RUST_CARGO_BUILD_PROFILE $RUST_CARGO_BUILD_FLAGS

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Build Phases

This buildpack uses the 4 standard build phases:

Build Phase	Purpose	Outcome	Logging Possible?
detect	Determine whether or not a Rust application can be built from the supplied files	The build directory must contain the file Cargo.toml. If this file can be found, the string Rust is returned with an exit code of 0, else exit code 1 is returned and no further build phases are performed	NO
supply	Installs any prerequiste tools, languages or frameworks etc.	The configured Rust toolchain is installed	YES
finalize	Compile the Rust application using any build settings found in RustConfig. If this file is missing or empty, it simply runs cargo build --release	An executable binary	YES
release	Point Cloud Foundry to the compiled binary	A YAML string	NO

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Build Phase Logging

Writing messages to the console is only possible for the build phases supply and finalize.

Normally, logging is switched off, but if your build is failing, or you simply wish to see the progress of the internal steps within these build phases, then create a file called CFLogBuildPhases in the same directory as your top level Cargo.toml. This file simply needs to exist — its contents are never read.

Deleting CFLogBuildPhases switches logging off.

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Testing with Docker

Changes to the buildpack can be tested using the included shell script test-buildpack.sh. This uses the standard rust Docker image.

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