Crubit: C++/Rust Bidirectional Interop Tool

NOTE: Crubit currently expects deep integration with the build system, and is difficult to deploy to environments dissimilar to Google's monorepo. We do not have our tooling set up to accept external contributions at this time.

Crubit is a bidirectional bindings generator for C++ and Rust, with the goal of integrating the C++ and Rust ecosystems.

Status

Support for calling FFI-friendly C++ from Rust is in progress.

Support for calling Rust from C++ will arrive in 2024H2.

Example

Consider the following C++ function:

extern "C" bool IsGreater(int lhs, int rhs);

This function, if present in a header file which is processed by Crubit, becomes callable from Rust as if it were defined as:

pub fn IsGreater(lhs: ffi::c_int, rhs: ffi::c_int) -> bool {...}

Note: There are some temporary restrictions on the API shape. For example, functions that are not extern "C", or that accept a type like std::string, can't be called from Rust directly via Crubit. These restrictions will be relaxed over time.

Getting Started

Here are some resources for getting started with Crubit:

• Rust Bindings for C++ Libraries is a detailed walkthrough on how to use C++ from Rust using Crubit.

• The examples/cpp/ directory has copy-pastable examples of calling C++ from Rust, together with snapshots of what the generated Rust interface looks like.

Building Crubit

$ apt install clang lld bazel
$ git clone git@github.com:google/crubit.git
$ cd crubit
$ bazel build --linkopt=-fuse-ld=/usr/bin/ld.lld //rs_bindings_from_cc:rs_bindings_from_cc_impl

Using a prebuilt LLVM tree

$ git clone https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project
$ cd llvm-project
$ CC=clang CXX=clang++ cmake -S llvm -B build -DLLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS='clang' -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=install
$ cmake --build build -j
$ # wait...
$ cmake --install build
$ cd ../crubit
$ LLVM_INSTALL_PATH=../llvm-project/install bazel build //rs_bindings_from_cc:rs_bindings_from_cc_impl