Ability to specify the output name for a bin target different from the crate name

As far as I know, the only way to name the output of a bin target is through the name attribute of a bin section.

This, however, sets both the crate name and the output name.

It seems too restricting that the output name of an executable should be a valid crate name.
For example, it cannot contain spaces. Cargo also warns if it's uppercase, because crate names are lowercase by convention.

Rustc with the -o FILENAME option allows to set any arbitrary filename for the output.

If there is already a way to do this with cargo, it should be better documented, as I couldn't find it.

I think this can be solved with cargo rustc (a relatively new subcommand), so I'm going to classify this as a docs bug.

How does cargo rustc solve this problem?

What I'm thinking of is the ability to specify the output name of the executable in Cargo.toml, so everyone who compiles it gets that executable name.

Yes cargo rustc would not allow you to encode the value in Cargo.toml, cargo does not currently allow that level of configuration.

I would like to express interest in this feature as well.

yes， +1 for this feature

One whole year and still nothing...

+1 for this feature.

+1 for this feature

Yes, please :)

@brettcannon

@brettcannon binary can have a name different from the name of he package, you can see it in Cargo toml in a [[bin]] section with the name key

@matklad

@matklad yep, and I deleted my comment as it was incorrect; sorry about the noise; misunderstanding on my part when looking for a solution for my problem. (And feel free to hide this comment.)

+1.

I wouldn't want to change my pretty

[[bin]]
name = "server"
path = "src/server/main.rs"

to

[[bin]]
name = "SoundAnalyzerServer.exe"
path = "src/server/main.rs"

Would love to see the ability to specify the name of the inferred main.rs binary target. Just a note, you can:

mkdir src/bin
mv src/main.rs src/bin/foo.rs

and the main bin will not longer be auto-discovered and cargo run will run the sole foo bin target without any other config. Would be nice to be able to do something like:

[bin.main]
name = "foo"

for aesthetics.

While I agree that it would be nice for aesthetics and/or convenience, personally I want this feature so that I can produce executables that have names not allowed by the current scheme (e.g. en% and de%).

Just tested and you can also:

[[bin]]
name = "foo"
path = "src/main.rs"

The name applies to the auto-discovered main target (no duplicate binary target is created).

Just tested and you can also:
[[bin]]
name = "foo"
path = "src/main.rs"
The name applies to the auto-discovered main target (no duplicate binary target is created).

Unfortunately if the name isn't in snake case (or kebab case) you'll get a warning (crate `X` should have a snake case name), but I want to name my executable file in pascal case. Hoping for a workaround other than disabling the warning or changing the name.

We used to have application binaries called foo.cli and foo.gui and unfortunately we can't switch to rust because this issue breaks backwards compatibility. All in all it's kinda silly that applications have a crate name tho, it's not like that's ever gonna be exposed anywhere, and it's not like there are macros to get the crate name at compile-time or anything.

Why not just set the crate name the same for all applications, and/or remove the concept of crate name from rust applications?

You can actually get the crate name at compile time. And crate names for application aren't « silly » as you say, they are necessary for crates.io (for both installation and searching.).

Unfortunately if the name isn't in snake case you'll get a warning (crate `X` should have a snake case name), but I want to name my executable file in pascal case. Hoping for a workaround other than disabling the warning or changing the name.

This isn't true (entirely), I have the following and I do not get any errors when calling cargo run:

[package]
name = "krate_name"

[[bin]]
name = "krate-name"
path = "src/bin/krate_name.rs"

It seems to also support kebab-case.

Unfortunately if the name isn't in snake case you'll get a warning (crate `X` should have a snake case name), but I want to name my executable file in pascal case. Hoping for a workaround other than disabling the warning or changing the name.

This isn't true (entirely), I have the following and I do not get any errors when calling cargo run:
[package]
name = "krate_name"

[[bin]]
name = "krate-name"
path = "src/bin/krate_name.rs"
It seems to also support kebab-case.

Yeah I forgot about that, edited. The warning explicitly says snake case, so I guess that's an oversight. Snake case is preferred over kebab case IIRC.

@alexcrichton

Hi everyone,
If possible I would like to take up this issue. Based on the discussion above, we can summarise the requirements as follows:

output name of the binary should not have the restrictions of a crate name.
add a second key in [[bin]] section along with name called filename.
1. name will allow us to set the name of the crate.
2. filename will allow us to set the name of the binary.
only allow this config options in [[bin]] and [[example]].

@alexcrichton @ehuss please correct me if I'm wrong about the above requirements.

@rustbot claim

Auto merge of #9627 - whereistejas:many-bin-names, r=ehuss

Closing as this is now implemented via #9627, and stabilization tracked in #9778.

We'll probably want to only allow this on [[bin]] and [[example]] targets to start off. Configuring the file stem of a [lib] target should likely be an error

I need this feature for a [lib]. My use case: I write plugins for other software in Rust, which are technically shared libraries (crate-type = ["dylib"]: .so files, as I'm workig on Linux), but should be named something.plugin instead of libsomething.so.

Such a good suggestion. I'm writing a plugin atm and I have a post-install script that renames the resulting "lib", since it's prefixed with lib and there doesn't seem to be a direct way of telling cargo to just use the name field. Strange that it does this by default.

Navigation Menu

Repository navigation

Ability to specify the output name for a bin target different from the crate name #1706

20 remaining items

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Type

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

Ability to specify the output name for a bin target different from the crate name #1706

Description

Activity

alexcrichton commented on Jun 11, 2015

crumblingstatue commented on Jun 11, 2015

alexcrichton commented on Jun 11, 2015

ebkalderon commented on Jan 5, 2016

cutewalker commented on Jul 11, 2016

VelocityRa commented on Jul 29, 2016

iddm commented on Nov 14, 2016

Lakier15 commented on Feb 1, 2017

Boscop commented on Apr 9, 2018

matklad commented on May 6, 2018

brettcannon commented on May 6, 2018

tzaeru commented on May 16, 2018

20 remaining items

dcow commented on Feb 2, 2021

dragonmaus commented on Feb 2, 2021

dcow commented on Feb 2, 2021

kotx commented on Feb 14, 2021

SoniEx2 commented on Feb 21, 2021

Wafelack commented on Feb 23, 2021

mainrs commented on Mar 7, 2021

kotx commented on Mar 7, 2021

whereistejas commented on Jun 26, 2021

ehuss commented on Aug 11, 2021

eureka-cpu commented on May 16, 2024

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Type

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

Issue actions