C + Rust

A little Rust with your C/C++. The "Hello world" to building Rust libs for C/C++ projects with CMake.

Prerequisites

The easiest way to get started is by using the Visual Studio Code Remote - Containers / Codespaces development container included in this repository. This container comes with Rust, Cargo, and several VSCode extensions pre-installed to help you get started quickly.

• For Remote - Containers, use the Remote-Containers: Open Repository in Container... command which creates a Docker volume for better disk I/O on macOS and Windows.
• For Codespaces, install the GitHub Codespaces extension in VSCode, and use the Codespaces: Create New Codespace command.

Once your workspace is setup, open a terminal to check everything is working:

cargo --version

rustc --version

Building

The easiest way to build the project is using the CMake extension in VSCode (included in the devcontainer). Open the command palette and run the CMake: Configure command, then the CMake: Build command.

Alternatively, you can build the project from the terminal:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .

This will build the C executable and the Rust library. From CMake, cargo is invoked by corrosion to build the Rust library. The Rust project includes a build script that will generate a C header file using cbindgen. This header file is included in the C project to provide the necessary declarations for the Rust functions.

Note: the first time you build the project, CMake will download the Rust dependencies and build the Rust library. This may take a few minutes.

Running

Once the project is built, you can run the C executable from the terminal:

./build/c_plus_rust