This action lets you easily cross-compile Rust projects using cross.
Here's an example from the release workflow for
my tool precious
:
jobs:
release:
name: Release - ${{ matrix.platform.release_for }}
strategy:
matrix:
platform:
- release_for: FreeBSD-x86_64
os: ubuntu-20.04
target: x86_64-unknown-freebsd
bin: precious
name: precious-FreeBSD-x86_64.tar.gz
command: build
- release_for: Windows-x86_64
os: windows-latest
target: x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
bin: precious.exe
name: precious-Windows-x86_64.zip
command: both
- release_for: macOS-x86_64
os: macOS-latest
target: x86_64-apple-darwin
bin: precious
name: precious-Darwin-x86_64.tar.gz
command: both
# more release targets here ...
runs-on: ${{ matrix.platform.os }}
steps:
- name: Checkout
uses: actions/checkout@v3
- name: Build binary
uses: houseabsolute/actions-rust-cross@v0
with:
command: ${{ matrix.platform.command }}
target: ${{ matrix.platform.target }}
args: "--locked --release"
strip: true
# more packaging stuff goes here ...
This action takes the following parameters:
Key | Type | Required? | Description |
---|---|---|---|
command |
string (one of build , test , or both ) |
no | The command(s) to run. The default is build . Running the test command will fail with *BSD targets, non-x86 Windows, and macOS ARM. |
target |
string | yes | The target triple to compile for. This should be one of the targets found by running rustup target list . |
working-directory |
string | no | The working directory in which to run the cargo or cross commands. Defaults to the current directory (. ). |
toolchain |
string (one of stable , beta , or nightly ) |
no | The Rust toolchain version to install. The default is stable . |
GITHUB_TOKEN |
string | no | Defaults to the value of ${{ github.token }} . |
args |
string | no | A string-separated list of arguments to be passed to cross build , like --release --locked . |
strip |
boolean (true or false ) |
no | If this is true, then the resulting binaries will be stripped if possible. This is only possible for binaries which weren't cross-compiled. |
cross-version |
string | no | This can be used to set the version of cross to use. If specified, it should be a specific cross release tag. If this is not set then the latest version will always be used. |
Under the hood, this action will compile your binaries with either cargo
or cross
, depending on
the host machine and target. For Linux builds, it will always use cross
except for builds
targeting an x86 architecture like x86_64
or i686
.
On Windows and macOS, it's possible to compile for all supported targets out of the box, so cross
will not be used on those platforms.
If it needs to install cross
, it will install the latest version by downloading a release using
my tool ubi
. This is much faster than using cargo
to
build cross
.
When compiling on Windows, it will do so in a Powershell environment, which can matter in some
corner cases, like compiling the openssl
crate with the vendored
feature.
Finally, it will run strip
to strip the binaries if the strip
parameter is true. This is only
possible for builds that are not done via cross
. In addition, Windows builds for aarch64
cannot
be stripped either.
You can use the Swatinem/rust-cache action with this one
seemlessly, whether or not a specific build target needs cross
. There is no special configuration
that you need for this. It just works.