The `rb_sys` gem

Gem

The rb_sys gem is a Ruby gem makes it easy to build native Ruby extensions in Rust. It interops with the existing Ruby native extension toolchains (i.e. rake-compiler) to make testing, building, and cross compilation of gems easy.

`RbSys::ExtensionTask`

This gem provides a RbSys::ExtensionTask class that can be used to build a Ruby extension in Rust. It's a thin wrapper around Rake::ExtensionTask that provides sane defaults for building Rust extensions.

# Rakefile

require "rb_sys/extensiontask"

GEMSPEC = Gem::Specification.load("my_gem.gemspec")

RbSys::ExtensionTask.new("my-crate-name", GEMSPEC) do |ext|
  ext.lib_dir = "lib/my_gem"
end

`create_rust_makefile`

This gem provides a simple helper to build a Ruby compatible Makefile for you Rust extension. For a full example, see the examples directory.

# ext/rust_reverse/extconf.rb

# We need to require mkmf *first* this since `rake-compiler` injects code here for cross compilation
require "mkmf"
require "rb_sys/mkmf"

create_rust_makefile("rust_reverse") do |r|
  # Create debug builds in dev. Make sure that release gems are compiled with
  # `RB_SYS_CARGO_PROFILE=release` (optional)
  r.profile = ENV.fetch("RB_SYS_CARGO_PROFILE", :dev).to_sym

  # Can be overridden with `RB_SYS_CARGO_FEATURES` env var (optional)
  r.features = ["test-feature"]

  # You can add whatever env vars you want to the env hash (optional)
  r.env = {"FOO" => "BAR"}

  # If your Cargo.toml is in a different directory, you can specify it here (optional)
  r.ext_dir = "."

  # Extra flags to pass to the $RUSTFLAGS environment variable (optional)
  r.extra_rustflags = ["--cfg=some_nested_config_var_for_crate"]

  # Force a rust toolchain to be installed via rustup (optional)
  # You can also set the env var `RB_SYS_FORCE_INSTALL_RUST_TOOLCHAIN=true`
  r.force_install_rust_toolchain = "stable"

  # Clean up the target/ dir after `gem install` to reduce bloat (optional)
  r.clean_after_install = false # default: true if invoked by rubygems

  # Auto-install Rust toolchain if not present on "gem install" (optional)
  r.auto_install_rust_toolchain = false # default: true if invoked by rubygems
end

Tips and Tricks

When using rake-compiler to build your gem, you can use the RB_SYS_CARGO_PROFILE environment variable to set the Cargo profile (i.e. release or dev).
You can pass Cargo arguments to rake-compiler like so: rake compile -- --verbose
It's possible to force an installation of a Rust toolchain by setting the RB_SYS_FORCE_INSTALL_RUST_TOOLCHAIN environment variable. This will install rustup and cargo in the build directory, so the end user does not have to have Rust pre-installed. Ideally, this should be a last resort, as it's better to already have the toolchain installed on your system.

Troubleshooting

Libclang issues

If you see an error like this:

thread 'main' panicked at 'Unable to find libclang: "couldn't find any valid shared libraries matching: \['libclang.so', 'libclang-*.so', 'libclang.so.*', 'libclang-*.so.*'\], set the `LIBCLANG_PATH` environment variable to a path where one of these files can be found (invalid: \[\])"'

This means that bindgen is having issues finding a usable version of libclang. An easy way to fix this is to install the libclang gem, which will install a pre-built version of libclang for you. rb_sys will automatically detect this gem and use it.

# Gemfile

gem "libclang", "~> 14.0.6"

The rb_sys gem