Create official Rust setup GitHub Action?

[jcbhmr]

Problem you are trying to solve

There's a lot of different Rust setup actions on GitHub Actions Marketplace:

https://github.com/marketplace?type=actions&query=setup+rust+

This dilutes the "truly good" ones because there's no well-known "good" one. The @actions-rs -- the most comprehensive org with the most users it seemed -- lead maintainer seems to be no longer active, and there's not really a good "best choice" replacement that I could find.

In short, the ecosystem is splintered. This is bad for beginners like me who just want to install the latest Rust version. (can you tell I'm a bit miffed? 🤣) Similar to how Deno has an official https://github.com/denoland/setup-deno action and Ruby has https://github.com/ruby/setup-ruby and so on, I think that some kind of setup-rust action would be a good idea.

I don't know if this is the right place to suggest such a thing, but I figured: hey, it's worth a shot!

Solution you'd like

If nothing else and this idea is out-of-scope for maintenance reasons, I'd at least like to see some kind of documentation pointer to 1 or 2 recommended GitHub Actions on maybe https://rustup.rs/ (cause that's where you go to install rust, right?) or maybe somewhere else? idk

If it's possible, you might also be able to convince @actions 👈 the https://github.com/actions org to add a setup-rust action. idk about that tho, that's even more far-fetched than a @rust-lang/setup-rust action...

I think it would be in the realm of plausibility to ask one of the various action authors 👆 from that big list (or even more than one of you could politically manage it) to bring the best action under the @rust-lang umbrella. That might actually be the most practical idea? 🤔 Or maybe not idk.

Notes

Sorry if I'm asking about this in the wrong place. Or if this idea is vastly out of scope. I just really think that having one good way to do this very common thing is a good idea.

Heck, even some of the @rust-lang repositories have this same issue! 😱

https://github.com/rust-lang/libc/blob/fab4a56f7265333f25bd6484784865c7bf513efa/.github/workflows/main.yml#L24-L29

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: Setup Rust toolchain
        run: TARGET=${{ matrix.target }} sh ./ci/install-rust.sh  # 👈🔴🔴
      - name: Execute run-docker.sh
        run: LIBC_CI=1 sh ./ci/run-docker.sh ${{ matrix.target }}

And there's 90+ matches for a search of "rustup" used in GitHub Actions for @rust-lang: https://github.com/search?q=org%3Arust-lang+rustup+%28path%3A.github%2Fworkflows%2F*.yml+OR+path%3A.github%2Fworkflows%2F*.yaml%29&type=code

👆 this is the kinda thing that I'd love for an official @rust-lang/setup-rust or @rust-lang/setup-rustup or something action to solve.

[dawnofmidnight]

I don't think this is necessary because, as visible in the rust-lang/rust-analyzer repository, rustup seems to be installed by default on the github actions runners. There's no rustup installation step there.

https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-analyzer/blob/99718d0c8bc5aadd993acdcabc1778fc7b5cc572/.github/workflows/ci.yaml#L63-L67

[rbtcollins]

I think we have a lot of history out there as things have evolved over time, and now rustup is perhaps more pervasive than it was.

Rustup is definitely in the official runner images: https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aactions%2Frunner-images%20rustup&type=code even though it is not documented in their README today.

Perhaps getting rustup documented more visibly by Github would be a good route forward?

[djc]

@jcbhmr as an experienced Rust maintainer, just wanted to say that I'm seeing all the repositories I'm participating in migrate to dtolnay/rust-toolchain.

[rami3l]

just wanted to say that I'm seeing all the repositories I'm participating in migrate to dtolnay/rust-toolchain

@djc Yup, I'm using @dtolnay's workflow as well since I know it's becoming the "de facto" option.

However, I do wonder where my knowledge of this comes from, since something is clearly missing, otherwise @jcbhmr should also know about it... Or it needs some more promotion in a certain way?

[jcbhmr]

@djc @rami3l The action it you're referring to: https://github.com/dtolnay/rust-toolchain
doesn't seem to appear in my naive search for "setup rust" https://github.com/marketplace?type=actions&query=setup+rust+ or even https://www.google.com/search?q=setup+rust+github+actions

as you mentioned it becoming the "de facto": a beginner like me has no idea what the de facto is because its not really listed anywhere...

when you search https://www.google.com/search?q=rust+github+actions you get @actions-rs, not the https://github.com/dtolnay/rust-toolchain. imo the best-case scenario here is one of:

• an official @rust-lang action to solidify it as THE best choice (you could even transfer/import from said community de-facto one idk)
• somehow reviving @actions-rs(?) since its top SEO
• an official @actions setup-rust action

👆 all that is from the perspective of a user who is completely oblivious to the complicated people-problems or other management issues with accomplishing any of those tasks

from a more conscientious perspective, you mentioned more promotion: maybe on https://rustup.rs or some other official installation place? this could go a ways to cementing a particular action as the recommended one.

[rami3l]

@jcbhmr Discoverability issues are indeed easier to be identified by newcomers like you, thanks a lot for your detailed feedback!

[jcbhmr]

@dawnofmidnight @rbtcollins you mentioned that rustup is available on github actions runners. this is true! and its awesome! 🙌 ...but take nodejs, another popular tool: its already installed at v18 the latest LTS on all github actions runners. and yet there's still a full https://github.com/actions/setup-node which does MORE THINIGS like configuring magic caching and registry and node-version-file etc. ...but that might be out of scope idk 🤷‍♀️.

even other smaller projects like oras are included in the github runner images https://github.com/actions/runner-images/blob/main/images/linux/Ubuntu2204-Readme.md#cli-toolsbut still provide things like https://github.com/oras-project/setup-oras to make version pinning configuration etc. easier.

i guess what I'm saying is there's a lot of convention around having official-ish setup actions. deno has one https://github.com/denoland/setup-deno even though its just a curl | sh. node has one https://github.com/actions/setup-node even though its already there. ocaml has one https://github.com/ocaml/setup-ocaml etc etc. and right now there's not a clear obvious one way to do it for rust. you've got the builtin toolchain, but then no caching. you've got @actions-rs but that's unmaintained. you've got various others https://www.google.com/search?q=setup+rust+action+github but there's so many and no top-dog one.

slightly off topic: to provide an example of a community project becoming official https://github.com/denolib/setup-deno became the official deno action https://github.com/denoland/setup-deno! its happened! just pointing that out 🤣

[rami3l]

I need an action to setup Rust as well because sometimes my actions happen in a custom Docker image.

FWIW I found out the thread that led me to dtolnay's workflow: actions-rs/toolchain#221. I'd been happily using @action-rs' one for quite a while until it didn't work anymore.

[rbtcollins]

@rami3l OTOH you could build your custom Docker image to have rustup already installed, as part of giving it parity with github runners, no? (rustup-init --default-toolchain=none).

@jcbhmr I use https://github.com/marketplace/actions/rust-cache with many projects, because the caching glue is very nice and hard to replicate.

I think the actions-rs org showed that there are many interesting actions (and more outside that org too - see the awesome-list present in the org).

The salient questions are:

• should rust-lang host one, or more than one, actions?
• if yes, should the rustup repository be the home for said actions

I don't have a strong view on the first one - on the one hand I'm skeptical of centralising things just-because, but on the other hand discoverability is indeed a challenge sometimes.

On the second one though, there is a very clear answer: 'no'. Github requires dedicated repositories for actions published to their marketplace.

So, this bug cannot be fixed here, ever. Making a new repository and all of that is also out of scope for the rustup bug tracker. I haven't ever gone through doing that so I can't even advise effectively!

I suggest reaching out to the infra team and discuss with them, if you decide to drive such a project.

I'm ok with leaving this bug open a little while as a place for you-all to coordinate, but longer term it needs to be transferred to a more appropriate repo, or closed.

[Xuanwo]

I'm not sure why we need a setup-rust action when rustup is already installed and up to date. A rust-toolchain.toml file should suffice for most scenarios. For more complex situations, users can simply run rustup toolchain add nightly.

Perhaps users are seeking a more powerful feature that allows them to enable caching with a simple cache: true?

---

you mentioned that rustup is available on github actions runners. this is true! and its awesome! 🙌 ...but take nodejs, another popular tool: its already installed at v18 the latest LTS on all github actions runners. and yet there's still a full https://github.com/actions/setup-node which does MORE THINIGS like configuring magic caching and registry and node-version-file etc. ...but that might be out of scope idk 🤷‍♀️.

The difference is github action runner install rustup instead of just rustc 1.74. And we have rust-toolchain.toml that can pick correct toolchain to run.

[jcbhmr]

To be more specific about what's missing from "just use rustup its already there":

• caching rust toolchain installations to $RUNNER_TOOL_CACHE
• caching built rust dependencies/artifacts based on Cargo.lock

👆 those are the problems that a rust-lang/setup-rust should solve 😉

along with a bunch of other multi-line command features being collapsed into a single YAML with: config object:

• use rust-toolchain file or ignore it?
• whether to fetch and use latest version or not
• use specific custom version of rust toolchain/rustc/etc.
• install specific targets in addition
• change path to Cargo.lock used for cache
• configure default Cargo registry url
• probably more im missing 🤷‍♀️

[antoyo]

Annotations is another big feature that a rust action could provide.

[Veetaha]

Hey, I found this issue thanks to Reddit.

I suggested there to consider moving actions-rust-lang/setup-rust-toolchain under the official rust-lang org, so that it could get more attention. I wonder what @jonasbb (supposedly the author of this awesome action) thinks about it.

At the very least docs that people go to when installing rust could promote this action.

[rami3l]

FWIW @Manishearth is considering the option of creating a separate team for maintaining official GitHub Actions:
https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/301329-t-devtools/topic/Having.20a.20CI.20subteam.3F

We could definitely use some help in this respect, so feel free to chime in if you're interested!

[mariusgreuel]

I don't think this is necessary because, as visible in the rust-lang/rust-analyzer repository, rustup seems to be installed by default on the github actions runners

I think it is still worthwhile having a setup-rust action. The primary reason is that on GHES you cannot assume that your runner has rustup installed. It would be nice to have a way to setup rust on a self-hosted runner similar to what setup-python does. That is, download & install Python if it is not installed yet, setup the proper environment variables, etc. The nice thing about setup-python is that you can put a github.com on a GHES repo and the workflows typically runs out of the box.

Plus, I find it a lot more consistent and trustworthy to have an official action called actions/setup-rust instead of some action on some unknown user account.