Docs.rs

Docs.rs (formerly cratesfyi) is an open source project to host documentation of crates for the Rust Programming Language.

Docs.rs automatically builds crates' documentation released on crates.io using the nightly release of the Rust compiler.

This readme is for developing docs.rs. See the about page for user-facing documentation.

How the documentation is generated

docs.rs uses rustdoc to generate the documentation for every crate release on crates.io. You can read the the rustdoc book for more details.

Changing the build environment

To make a change to the build environment and test that it works on docs.rs, see the wiki.

Development

The recommended way to develop docs.rs is a combination of cargo run for the main binary and docker-compose for the external services. This gives you reasonable incremental build times without having to add new users and packages to your host machine.

Git Hooks

For ease of use, git_hooks directory contains useful git hooks to make your development easier.

# Unix
cd .git/hooks && ln -s ../../.git_hooks/* . && cd ../..
# Powershell
cd .git/hooks && New-Item -Path ../../.git_hooks/* -ItemType SymbolicLink -Value . && cd ../..

Dependencies

Docs.rs requires at least the following native C dependencies.

• gcc
• g++
• pkg-config
• git
• make
• cmake
• zlib
• openssl (with dev pkgs) -- Ubuntu example sudo apt install libssl-dev

There may be other dependencies that have not been documented.

Getting started

Make sure you have docker-compose and are able to download ~10GB data on the first run. Also ensure that docker is installed and the service is running.

git clone https://github.com/rust-lang/docs.rs.git docs.rs
cd docs.rs
git submodule update --init
# Configure the default settings for external services
cp .env.sample .env
# Create the DOCSRS_PREFIX directory
mkdir -p ignored/cratesfyi-prefix/crates.io-index
# Builds the docs.rs binary
SQLX_OFFLINE=1 cargo build
# Start the external services.
# It may be `docker compose` in newer versions
docker-compose up -d db s3
# anything that doesn't run via docker-compose needs the settings defined in
# .env. Either via `. ./.env` as below, or via any dotenv shell integration.
. ./.env
# allow downloads from the s3 container to support the /crate/.../download endpoint
mcli policy set download docsrs/rust-docs-rs
# Setup the database you just created
cargo run -- database migrate
# Update the currently used toolchain to the latest nightly
# This also sets up the docs.rs build environment.
# This will take a while the first time but will be cached afterwards.
cargo run -- build update-toolchain
# Build a sample crate to make sure it works
cargo run -- build crate regex 1.3.1
# This starts the web server but does not build any crates.
# It does not automatically run the migrations, so you need to do that manually (see above).
cargo run -- start-web-server
# If you want the server to automatically restart when code or templates change
# you can use `cargo-watch`:
cargo watch -x "run -- start-web-server"

If you need to store big files in the repository's directory it's recommended to put them in the ignored/ subdirectory, which is ignored both by git and Docker.

Running the database and S3 server outside of docker-compose is possible, but not recommended or supported. Note that you will need docker installed no matter what, since it's used for Rustwide sandboxing.

Running tests

cargo test

To run GUI tests:

./dockerfiles/run-gui-tests.sh

They use the browser-ui-test framework. You can take a look at its documentation here.

Pure docker-compose

If you have trouble with the above commands, consider using docker-compose up --build, which uses docker-compose for the web server as well. This will not cache dependencies - in particular, you'll have to rebuild all 400 whenever the lockfile changes - but makes sure that you're in a known environment so you should have fewer problems getting started.

You can also use the web container to run builds on systems which don't support running builds directly (mostly on Mac OS or Windows):

# run a build for a single crate
docker-compose run web build crate regex 1.3.1
# or build essential files
docker-compose run web build add-essential-files
# rebuild the web container when you changed code.
docker-compose build web

Note that running tests is not supported when using pure docker-compose.

Please file bugs for any trouble you have running docs.rs!

Docker-Compose

The services started by Docker-Compose are defined in docker-compose.yml. Three services are defined:

name	access	credentials	description
web	http://localhost:3000	N/A	A container running the docs.rs binary
db	postgresql://cratesfyi:password@localhost:15432	-	Postgres database used by web
s3	http://localhost:9000	cratesfyi - secret_key	MinIO (simulates AWS S3) used by web

Rebuilding Containers

To rebuild the site, run docker-compose build. Note that docker-compose caches the build even if you change the source code, so this will be necessary anytime you make changes.

If you want to completely clean up the database, don't forget to remove the volumes too:

$ docker-compose down --volumes

FAQ

I see the error standard_init_linux.go:211: exec user process caused "no such file or directory" when I use docker-compose.

You probably have CRLF line endings. This causes the hashbang in the docker-entrypoint to be /bin/sh\r instead of /bin/sh. This is probably because you have git.autocrlf set to true, set it to input instead.

I see the error /opt/rustwide/cargo-home/bin/cargo: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error when running builds.

You are most likely not on a Linux platform. Running builds directly is only supported on x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu. On other platforms you can use the docker-compose run web build [...] workaround described above.

See rustwide#41 for more details about supporting more platforms directly.

All tests are failing or timing out

Our test setup needs a certain about of file descriptors.

At least 4096 should be enough, you can set it via:

$ ulimit -n 4096

CLI

See cargo run -- --help for a full list of commands.

Starting the web server

# This command will start web interface of docs.rs on http://localhost:3000
cargo run -- start-web-server

build subcommand

# Builds <CRATE_NAME> <CRATE_VERSION> and adds it into database
# This is the main command to build and add a documentation into docs.rs.
# For example, `docker-compose run web build crate regex 1.1.6`
cargo run -- build crate <CRATE_NAME> <CRATE_VERSION>

# alternatively, via the web container
docker-compose run web build crate <CRATE_NAME> <CRATE_VERSION>

# Builds every crate on crates.io and adds them into database
# (beware: this may take months to finish)
cargo run -- build world

# Builds a local package you have at <SOURCE> and adds it to the database.
# The package does not have to be on crates.io.
# The package must be on the local filesystem, git urls are not allowed.
# Usually this command can be applied directly to a crate root
# In certain scenarios it might be necessary to first package the respective
# crate by using the `cargo package` command.
# See also /docs/build-workspaces.md
cargo run -- build crate --local /path/to/source

database subcommand

# Adds a directory into database to serve with `staticfile` crate.
cargo run -- database add-directory <DIRECTORY> [PREFIX]

# Updates repository stats for crates.
# You need to set the DOCSRS_GITHUB_ACCESSTOKEN
# environment variable in order to run this command.
# Set DOCSRS_GITLAB_ACCESSTOKEN to raise the rate limit for GitLab repositories,
# or leave it blank to fetch repositories at a slower rate.
cargo run -- database update-repository-fields

If you want to explore or edit database manually, you can connect to the database with the psql command.

. ./.env
psql $DOCSRS_DATABASE_URL

The database contains a blacklist of crates that should not be built.

# List the crates on the blacklist
cargo run -- database blacklist list

# Adds <CRATE_NAME> to the blacklist
cargo run -- database blacklist add <CRATE_NAME>

# Removes <CRATE_NAME> from the blacklist
cargo run -- database blacklist remove <CRATE_NAME>

If you want to revert to a precise migration, you can run:

cargo run -- database migrate <migration number>

daemon subcommand

# Run a persistent daemon which queues builds and starts a web server.
cargo run -- daemon --registry-watcher=disabled
# Add crates to the queue
cargo run -- queue add <CRATE> <VERSION>

Updating vendored sources

The instructions & links for updating Font Awesome can be found on their website. Similarly, Pure-CSS also explains on theirs.

When updating Font Awesome, make sure to change $fa-font-path in scss/_variables.scss (it should be at the top of the file) to ../-/static. This will point font awesome at the correct path from which to request font and icon resources.

Contact

Docs.rs is run and maintained by the docs.rs team. You can find us in #t-docs-rs on zulip