Cranelift codegen backend for rust

The goal of this project is to create an alternative codegen backend for the rust compiler based on Cranelift. This has the potential to improve compilation times in debug mode. If your project doesn't use any of the things listed under "Not yet supported", it should work fine. If not please open an issue.

Download using Rustup

The Cranelift codegen backend is distributed in nightly builds on Linux and x86_64 macOS. If you want to install it using Rustup, you can do that by running:

$ rustup component add rustc-codegen-cranelift-preview --toolchain nightly

Once it is installed, you can enable it with one of the following approaches:

• CARGO_PROFILE_DEV_CODEGEN_BACKEND=cranelift cargo +nightly build -Zcodegen-backend
• RUSTFLAGS="-Zcodegen-backend=cranelift" cargo +nightly build
• Add the following to .cargo/config.toml:

  [unstable]
  codegen-backend = true
  
  [profile.dev]
  codegen-backend = "cranelift"
  

• Add the following to Cargo.toml:

  # This line needs to come before anything else in Cargo.toml
  cargo-features = ["codegen-backend"]
  
  [profile.dev]
  codegen-backend = "cranelift"
  

Precompiled builds

You can also download a pre-built version from the releases page. Extract the dist directory in the archive anywhere you want. If you want to use cargo clif build instead of having to specify the full path to the cargo-clif executable, you can add the bin subdirectory of the extracted dist directory to your PATH. (tutorial for Windows, and for Linux/MacOS).

Building and testing

If you want to build the backend manually, you can download it from GitHub and build it yourself:

$ git clone https://github.com/rust-lang/rustc_codegen_cranelift
$ cd rustc_codegen_cranelift
$ ./y.sh prepare
$ ./y.sh build

To run the test suite replace the last command with:

$ ./test.sh

For more docs on how to build and test see build_system/usage.txt or the help message of ./y.sh.

Platform support

OS \ architecture	x86_64	AArch64	Riscv64	s390x (System-Z)
Linux	✅	✅	✅1	✅1
FreeBSD	✅1	❓	❓	❓
AIX	❌2	N/A	N/A	❌2
Other unixes	❓	❓	❓	❓
macOS	✅	❌3	N/A	N/A
Windows	✅1	❌	N/A	N/A

✅: Fully supported and tested ❓: Maybe supported, not tested ❌: Not supported at all

Not all targets are available as rustup component for nightly. See notes in the platform support matrix.

Usage

rustc_codegen_cranelift can be used as a near-drop-in replacement for cargo build or cargo run for existing projects.

Assuming $cg_clif_dir is the directory you cloned this repo into and you followed the instructions (y.sh prepare and y.sh build or test.sh).

In the directory with your project (where you can do the usual cargo build), run:

$ $cg_clif_dir/dist/cargo-clif build

This will build your project with rustc_codegen_cranelift instead of the usual LLVM backend.

For additional ways to use rustc_codegen_cranelift like the JIT mode see usage.md.

Building and testing with changes in rustc code

This is useful when changing code in rustc_codegen_cranelift as part of changing main Rust repository. This can happen, for example, when you are implementing a new compiler intrinsic.

Instruction below uses $RustCheckoutDir as substitute for any folder where you cloned Rust repository.

You need to do this steps to successfully compile and use the cranelift backend with your changes in rustc code:

1. cd $RustCheckoutDir
2. Run python x.py setup and choose option for compiler (b).
3. Build compiler and necessary tools: python x.py build --stage=2 compiler library/std src/tools/rustdoc src/tools/rustfmt
   • (Optional) You can also build cargo by adding src/tools/cargo to previous command.
4. Copy cargo from a nightly toolchain: cp $(rustup +nightly which cargo) ./build/host/stage2/bin/cargo. Note that you would need to do this every time you rebuilt rust repository.
5. Link your new rustc to toolchain: rustup toolchain link stage2 ./build/host/stage2/.
6. (Windows only) compile the build system: rustc +stage2 -O build_system/main.rs -o y.exe.
7. You need to prefix every ./y.sh (or y if you built build_system/main.rs as y) command by rustup run stage2 to make cg_clif use your local changes in rustc.

• rustup run stage2 ./y.sh prepare
• rustup run stage2 ./y.sh build
• (Optional) run tests: rustup run stage2 ./y.sh test

8. Now you can use your cg_clif build to compile other Rust programs, e.g. you can open any Rust crate and run commands like $RustCheckoutDir/compiler/rustc_codegen_cranelift/dist/cargo-clif build --release.

You can also set rust-analyzer.rustc.source to your rust workspace to get rust-analyzer to understand your changes.

Configuration

See the documentation on the BackendConfig struct in config.rs for all configuration options.

Not yet supported

• SIMD (tracked here, std::simd fully works, std::arch is partially supported)
• Unwinding on panics (no cranelift support, -Cpanic=abort is enabled by default)

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 shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.

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1. Not available as rustup component for nightly. You can build it yourself. ↩︎

2. XCOFF object file format is not supported. ↩︎

3. Tracked in #1248. ↩︎