Setup Rust and Cargo

A GitHub action for setting up Rust and Cargo.

jobs:
  ci:
    name: CI
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      # ...
      - uses: moonrepo/setup-rust@v0
      - run: cargo test

Configuring the Rust toolchain

This action will automatically install the appropriate toolchain with rustup by inspecting the RUSTUP_TOOLCHAIN environment variable or the rust-toolchain.toml (preferred) or rust-toolchain configuration files. To specify the location of the toolchain configuration files you can use rust-toolchain-file option. If no toolchain found, will default to stable.

# rust-toolchain.toml
[toolchain]
channel = "1.68.0"

When loading a configuration file, only the channel field is used, while the other fields are ignored. We chose this approach, as those other fields are typically for develop/release workflows, but not for CI, which requires a minimal/granular setup.

The toolchain/channel can also be explicitly configured with the toolchain input, which takes highest precedence.

- uses: moonrepo/setup-rust@v0
  with:
    toolchain: '1.65.0'

Profile and components

Furthermore, this action supports rustup profiles and components, which can be configured with the profile and components inputs respectively. When not defined, profile defaults to minimal.

- uses: moonrepo/setup-rust@v0
  with:
    profile: complete

When using components, the input requires a comma separated list of component names.

- uses: moonrepo/setup-rust@v0
  with:
    components: clippy
- run: cargo clippy --workspace

Installing Cargo binaries

If you require cargo-make, cargo-nextest, or other global binaries, this action supports installing Cargo binaries through the bins input, which requires a comma-separated list of crate names (cargo- prefix optional).

- uses: moonrepo/setup-rust@v0
  with:
    bins: nextest, cargo-insta@1.28.0

Binaries are installed with cargo-binstall under the hood.

Caching in CI

By default this action will cache the ~/.cargo/registry and /target/debug directories to improve CI times. To disable caching, set the cache input to false.

- uses: moonrepo/setup-rust@v0
  with:
    cache: false

The following optimizations and considerations are taken into account when caching:

• ~/.cargo
  • The /bin directory is not cached as we manage binary installation in this action via the bins input.
  • The /git directory is not cached as it's not necessary for CI. When required by Cargo or a crate, a checkout will be performed on-demand.
  • The /registry directory is cleaned before saving the cache. This includes removing src, .cache, and any other unnecessary files.
• /target/debug
  • Only the debug profile is cached, as this profile is typically used for formatting, linting, and testing.
  • The /examples and /incremental directories are not cached as they are not necessary for CI.
  • All dep-info (*.d) files are removed, as they're meant for build systems and signaling re-executions.

The following sources are hashed for the generated cache key: $GITHUB_JOB, Cargo.lock, Rust version, Rust commit hash, and OS.

Compared to

actions-rs/*

The "official" actions have served their purpose, but after 3 years of no updates, severe lack of maintenance, and being full of deprecation warnings, it was time to create something new.

Outside of being evergreen, this action also supports the following features:

• Automatically caches.
• Installs Cargo bins.
• Assumes rustup, cargo, and other commands are available globally. This allows you to use them directly in a run command, without having to use actions-rs/cargo.

However, this action does not:

• Install rustup if it does not exist, while actions-rs will. This is typically fine if using GitHub provided runners as all Rust tooling comes pre-installed.

dtolnay/rust-toolchain

This action is very similar to dtolnay/rust-toolchain, which was a great implementation reference, but this action also supports the following features:

• Extracts the toolchain/channel from rust-toolchain.toml and rust-toolchain configuration files.
• Automatically caches.
• Installs Cargo bins.