Turn bin/lib into subcrates within workspace?

[Kixunil]

Bindgen is both library and binary but binary requires certain features which are not needed in build scripts (mainly clap). This is handled by features but because of the way features work in Cargo they are turned on by default. This is a footgun for every library author who wishes to use build script as they may forget to turn them on. An example of this case was found in rocksb.

Spliting up library and binary fixes the issue without causing ridiculous compile errors because of missing features.
Alternative: wait eternity until rust-lang/rfcs#3020 is implemented.

[emilio]

Yeah, this is a reasonable idea, but I'm not sure if it's possible without breaking either binary or library users unfortunately, as both crates would have to have the same name...

[Kixunil]

Is your concern that people will run cargo install bindgen and it'll not work? If yes, is this something widely used in automated setups?

[emilio]

Yes, and whether it's widely used, I'm not sure.

[Kixunil]

Perhaps a way to solve it gracefully is to create a new crate called bindgen-bin which would be a copy of [bin] from bindgen. Once it's ready add an unconditional warning to the binary in bindgen saying it's deprecated and users need to switch to bindgen-bin. Then remove it after 6 months or something.

Do you think that could work?

[emilio]

That might be reasonable (sorry for the lag, exams and work :/)

[emilio]

Done in #2284