Support raw-dylib link kind on ELF by Noratrieb · Pull Request #135695 · rust-lang/rust

@rustbot rustbot added A-compiletest

Area: The compiletest test runner

A-testsuite

Area: The testsuite used to check the correctness of rustc

S-waiting-on-review

Status: Awaiting review from the assignee but also interested parties.

T-bootstrap

Relevant to the bootstrap subteam: Rust's build system (x.py and src/bootstrap)

T-compiler

Relevant to the compiler team, which will review and decide on the PR/issue.

labels

Jan 18, 2025

bjorn3

bjorn3

bjorn3

bjorn3

bjorn3

bjorn3

bjorn3

bjorn3

jieyouxu

@bors bors added the S-waiting-on-bors

Status: Waiting on bors to run and complete tests. Bors will change the label on completion.

label

Mar 3, 2025

bors added a commit to rust-lang-ci/rust that referenced this pull request

Mar 3, 2025
Support raw-dylib link kind on ELF

raw-dylib is a link kind that allows rustc to link against a library without having any library files present.
This currently only exists on Windows. rustc will take all the symbols from raw-dylib link blocks and put them in an import library, where they can then be resolved by the linker.

While import libraries don't exist on ELF, it would still be convenient to have this same functionality. Not having the libraries present at build-time can be convenient for several reasons, especially cross-compilation. With raw-dylib, code linking against a library can be cross-compiled without needing to have these libraries available on the build machine. If the libc crate makes use of this, it would allow cross-compilation without having any libc available on the build machine. This is not yet possible with this implementation, at least against libc's like glibc that use symbol versioning. The raw-dylib kind could be extended with support for symbol versioning in the future.

This implementation is very experimental and I have not tested it very well. I have tested it for a toy example and the lz4-sys crate, where it was able to successfully link a binary despite not having a corresponding library at build-time.

I was inspired by Björn's comments in https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/bundle-zig-cc-in-rustup-by-default/22096/27
Tracking issue: rust-lang#135694

r? bjorn3

try-job: aarch64-apple
try-job: x86_64-msvc-1
try-job: x86_64-msvc-2
try-job: test-various

tgross35 added a commit to tgross35/rust that referenced this pull request

Mar 3, 2025
Support raw-dylib link kind on ELF

raw-dylib is a link kind that allows rustc to link against a library without having any library files present.
This currently only exists on Windows. rustc will take all the symbols from raw-dylib link blocks and put them in an import library, where they can then be resolved by the linker.

While import libraries don't exist on ELF, it would still be convenient to have this same functionality. Not having the libraries present at build-time can be convenient for several reasons, especially cross-compilation. With raw-dylib, code linking against a library can be cross-compiled without needing to have these libraries available on the build machine. If the libc crate makes use of this, it would allow cross-compilation without having any libc available on the build machine. This is not yet possible with this implementation, at least against libc's like glibc that use symbol versioning. The raw-dylib kind could be extended with support for symbol versioning in the future.

This implementation is very experimental and I have not tested it very well. I have tested it for a toy example and the lz4-sys crate, where it was able to successfully link a binary despite not having a corresponding library at build-time.

I was inspired by Björn's comments in https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/bundle-zig-cc-in-rustup-by-default/22096/27
Tracking issue: rust-lang#135694

r? bjorn3

try-job: aarch64-apple
try-job: x86_64-msvc-1
try-job: x86_64-msvc-2
try-job: test-various

@bors bors added S-waiting-on-review

Status: Awaiting review from the assignee but also interested parties.

and removed S-waiting-on-bors

Status: Waiting on bors to run and complete tests. Bors will change the label on completion.

labels

Mar 3, 2025

@bors bors added S-waiting-on-bors

Status: Waiting on bors to run and complete tests. Bors will change the label on completion.

and removed S-waiting-on-review

Status: Awaiting review from the assignee but also interested parties.

labels

Mar 3, 2025

This was referenced

Mar 3, 2025

bors added a commit to rust-lang-ci/rust that referenced this pull request

Mar 3, 2025

bors added a commit to rust-lang-ci/rust that referenced this pull request

Mar 3, 2025

tgross35 added a commit to tgross35/rust that referenced this pull request

Mar 4, 2025
Support raw-dylib link kind on ELF

raw-dylib is a link kind that allows rustc to link against a library without having any library files present.
This currently only exists on Windows. rustc will take all the symbols from raw-dylib link blocks and put them in an import library, where they can then be resolved by the linker.

While import libraries don't exist on ELF, it would still be convenient to have this same functionality. Not having the libraries present at build-time can be convenient for several reasons, especially cross-compilation. With raw-dylib, code linking against a library can be cross-compiled without needing to have these libraries available on the build machine. If the libc crate makes use of this, it would allow cross-compilation without having any libc available on the build machine. This is not yet possible with this implementation, at least against libc's like glibc that use symbol versioning. The raw-dylib kind could be extended with support for symbol versioning in the future.

This implementation is very experimental and I have not tested it very well. I have tested it for a toy example and the lz4-sys crate, where it was able to successfully link a binary despite not having a corresponding library at build-time.

I was inspired by Björn's comments in https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/bundle-zig-cc-in-rustup-by-default/22096/27
Tracking issue: rust-lang#135694

r? bjorn3

try-job: aarch64-apple
try-job: x86_64-msvc-1
try-job: x86_64-msvc-2
try-job: test-various

bors added a commit to rust-lang-ci/rust that referenced this pull request

Mar 4, 2025
Rollup of 6 pull requests

Successful merges:

 - rust-lang#135695 (Support raw-dylib link kind on ELF)
 - rust-lang#137836 (Set `target_vendor = "openwrt"` on `mips64-openwrt-linux-musl`)
 - rust-lang#137913 (Allow struct field default values to reference struct's generics)
 - rust-lang#137949 (Update MSVC INSTALL.md instructions to recommend VS 2022 + recent Windows 10/11 SDK)
 - rust-lang#137963 (Add ``dyn`` keyword to `E0373` examples)
 - rust-lang#137975 (Remove unused `PpMode::needs_hir`)

r? `@ghost`
`@rustbot` modify labels: rollup

@madsmtm madsmtm added the A-linkage

Area: linking into static, shared libraries and binaries

label

Sep 6, 2025