Begin by adding build-info
as a [dependency]
and build-info-build
as a [build-dependency]
to your Cargo.toml
.
By separating those two crates, pure compile-time dependencies, such as git2
are not compiled into your final program.
Please make sure that both dependencies use the same version!
If it does not already exist, add a build.rs
to your project's root, where you call build_info_build::build_script()
.
This will collect build information at compile time.
Then, either use the build_info!
macro to add a function that returns version information at runtime:
build_info::build_info!(fn version);
or use build_info::format!
to generate a string at compile time:
// sample output: "{sample v0.0.13 built with rustc 1.45.0-nightly (4bd32c980 2020-05-29) at 2020-05-30 11:22:46Z}"
build_info::format!("{{{.crate_info.name} v{.crate_info.version} built with {.compiler} at {.timestamp}}}")
The sample project shows both variants.
The build_info
package supports several feature flags:
- The
runtime
feature enablesbuild_info::build_info!
. It is enabled by default, but if you intend to only usebuild_info::format!
, it is safe to disable this flag. - The
nested
feature adds support forproc-macro-nested
, which lets thebuild_info::format!
macro be nested inside other proc-macros. This may require you to set#![recursion_limit = "..."]
in your crate. The feature is disabled by default. - The
chrono
feature enables the default features of thechrono
package, which is used bybuild_info::build_info!
. It is disabled by default. - The
serde
feature addsSerialize
/Deserialize
support to the types used bybuild_info::build_info!
. It is disabled by default.
As of the time of writing, Rust does not support function-like proc-macros used as expressions.
The format!
macro can often still be used as an expression, thanks to the proc-macro-hack
crate.
However, its result will not behave like a string literal in all cases; for example, it cannot be used as an argument to concat!
.
The build script will ask cargo to rerun it whenever the project or the currently checked out commit changes.
It will not necessarily be rerun if only the dependencies change (build_info_build::build_script
will try to find the lockfile and depend on it, but it is not really aware of any of the more intricate features, such as, cargo workspaces).
Please open an issue if your specific use case requires a more strict rerun policy for build.rs
and include a short description what additional files should trigger a rebuild when changed.