Crates
The crate_type
attribute can be used to tell the compiler whether a crate is a binary or a library (and even which type of library), and the crate_name
attribute can be used to set the name of the crate.
However, it is important to note that both the crate_type
and crate_name
attributes have no effect whatsoever when using Cargo, the Rust package manager. Since Cargo is used for the majority of Rust projects, this means real-world uses of crate_type
and crate_name
are relatively limited.
// This crate is a library
#![crate_type = "lib"]
// The library is named "rary"
#![crate_name = "rary"]
pub fn public_function() {
println!("called rary's `public_function()`");
}
fn private_function() {
println!("called rary's `private_function()`");
}
pub fn indirect_access() {
print!("called rary's `indirect_access()`, that\n> ");
private_function();
}
When the crate_type
attribute is used, we no longer need to pass the --crate-type
flag to rustc
.
$ rustc lib.rs
$ ls lib*
library.rlib