cargo-xwin

cargo-xwin

formerly cargo-xwinbuild

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Cross compile Cargo project to Windows msvc target with ease using xwin or windows-msvc-sysroot.

By using this software you are consented to accept the license at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=2086102

Prerequisite

1. Install clang (On macOS run brew install llvm and you're good to go).
2. For assembly dependencies, install llvm-tools component via rustup component add llvm-tools or install llvm.

A full LLVM installation is recommended to avoid possible issues.

Installation

cargo install --locked cargo-xwin

You can also install it using pip:

pip install cargo-xwin

We also provide a Docker image which has wine pre-installed in addition to cargo-xwin and Rust, for example to build for x86_64 Windows:

docker run --rm -it -v $(pwd):/io -w /io messense/cargo-xwin \
  cargo xwin build --release --target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

Usage

1. Install Rust Windows msvc target via rustup, for example, rustup target add x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
2. Run cargo xwin build, for example, cargo xwin build --target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

Pre-caching for offline builds

You can pre-download and cache the MSVC CRT and Windows SDK for offline builds:

# Cache Microsoft CRT and Windows SDK (for clang-cl backend)
cargo xwin cache xwin

# Cache windows-msvc-sysroot (for clang backend)
cargo xwin cache windows-msvc-sysroot

This is useful for Docker images or CI/CD pipelines where you want to cache dependencies ahead of time.

The clang-cl backend supports cache paths containing spaces. If you configure target..rustflags in Cargo configuration, use an array (for example, rustflags = ["-C", "target-feature=+crt-static"]): Cargo cannot merge its space-preserving array override with string-valued rustflags. Native compiler flags use shell quoting through CC_SHELL_ESCAPED_FLAGS=1.

cargo xwin env cannot export flags that require Cargo --config arguments, including library paths containing spaces. Use cargo xwin build, check, or another build command directly in that case.

Run tests with wine

With wine installed, you can run tests with the cargo xwin test command, for example, cargo xwin test --target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

Running Windows executables in WSL (without wine)

If you want to run Windows executables directly in WSL (without using wine), you can set the runner environment variable as follows:

CARGO_TARGET_X86_64_PC_WINDOWS_MSVC_RUNNER="/usr/bin/env" cargo xwin run --target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

Customization

The Microsoft CRT and Windows SDK can be customized using the following environment variables or CLI options.

CMake Support

Some Rust crates use the cmake crate to build C/C++ dependencies, cargo-xwin will generate a CMake toolchain file automatically to make cross compilation work out of the box.

ninja is required to enable CMake support.

License

This work is released under the MIT license. A copy of the license is provided in the LICENSE file.