Build environment for third-party Rust crates

This repository contains the source code and the tooling to produce the Docker containers used by Crater and docs.rs to build third-party crates. The contents of this repository are released under the MIT license.

The images do not contain a Rust toolchain in them: you'll need to manually mount the toolchain(s) you want to use inside the container.

Available containers

linux

This container is based on Ubuntu 26.04 and includes all the native dependencies used by Rust crates we know of. It's used as the build environment for the Crater and docs.rs projects.

You can pull this container by running:

docker pull ghcr.io/rust-lang/crates-build-env/linux:latest

linux-micro

This container is based on Ubuntu 26.04 and includes the minimum set of dependencies needed to compile simple Rust programs. It's used by the test suites of Crater and docs.rs and during local development.

You can pull this container by running:

docker pull ghcr.io/rust-lang/crates-build-env/linux-micro:latest

windows

This work in progress container is based on Windows 2019. It's currently unused and unmaintained, and no automated builds for it are available.

Linux distro update policy

The linux and linux-micro containers track Ubuntu LTS releases. When the base distro is updated, we move to the current Ubuntu LTS rather than following interim Ubuntu releases.

Anyone can send the PR for a distro update. If you want to help with the transition to the next Ubuntu LTS, feel free to open a PR with the required changes.

Adding new dependencies

If a crate needs a native library that is missing from the image, add its Ubuntu package name to the appropriate alphabetically sorted package list:

• linux/packages.txt for the full image
• linux-micro/packages.txt for the minimal image

The package must be available in the Ubuntu 26.04 repositories. Use the package search at packages.ubuntu.com or apt search to find the name. For iterative package work, temporarily add packages to the Dockerfile after the existing install step to reuse the cached package layer, then move them into packages.txt once confirmed. A cold Docker image build can take 10–20 minutes; subsequent builds reuse Docker layers. Once the crate builds, run ./lint.sh before committing to verify package ordering.

Testing the Linux image locally

The test requires Docker with Linux containers and Bash (including Git Bash or WSL on Windows). The image and local crate paths are resolved from the directory where test_build.sh is invoked and may be relative or absolute.

After adding a system dependency, run ./test_build.sh <image-directory> <local-crate> [cargo-arguments...] to rebuild the image and check whether the package fixes the crate's build. The Cargo command defaults to build; all provided Cargo arguments are forwarded unchanged. For example:

./test_build.sh linux-micro test/test-crate
./test_build.sh linux path/to/my-crate
./test_build.sh linux-micro /absolute/path/to/my-crate
./test_build.sh linux-micro test/test-crate test
./test_build.sh linux-micro test/test-crate doc --all-features
./test_build.sh linux-micro test/test-crate test --all-features

Rustwide itself runs in a Linux container and starts the build container through the mounted Docker socket, so the host only needs Docker configured to run Linux containers. The first run can take a few minutes while Rustwide initializes its workspace and installs nightly; later runs reuse .rustwide-test.