GitHub Action - rust-toolchain-reborn

This GitHub Action installs Rust toolchain with the help of rustup.

It supports additional targets, components, profiles and handles all these small paper cuts for you.

Table of Contents

• GitHub Action - rust-toolchain-reborn
  • Table of Contents
  • Example workflow
  • Inputs
  • Outputs
  • Profiles
  • Components
  • The toolchain file
  • License
  • Contribute and support

Example workflow

on: [push]

name: build

jobs:
    check:
        name: Rust project
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
        steps:
            - uses: actions/checkout@v4
            - name: Install latest nightly
              uses: crusty-pie/toolchain@v1
              with:
                  toolchain: nightly
                  override: true
                  components: rustfmt, clippy

            # `cargo check` command here will use installed `nightly`
            # as it is set as an "override" for current directory
            - name: Run cargo check
              run: cargo check

Inputs

Name	Required	Description	Type	Default
toolchain	false	Toolchain name to use, ex. stable, nightly, nightly-2019-04-20, or 1.32.0	string	stable
profile	false	Execute rustup set profile {value} before installing the toolchain, ex. minimal	string	default
components	false	Comma-separated list of the additional components to install, ex. clippy, rustfmt	string	''
targets	false	Comma-separated list of the additional targets for the toolchain, ex. x86_64-apple-darwin	string	''
default	false	Set installed toolchain as a default toolchain	bool	false
override	false	Set installed toolchain as an override for the current directory	bool	false
force	false	Force an update, even if some components are missing	bool	false

Note: since v1.0.4 version, toolchain input is not marked as required to support toolchain files. See the details below.

Outputs

Installed rustc, cargo and rustup versions can be fetched from the Action outputs:

Name	Description	Example
rustc	Rustc version	1.40.0 (73528e339 2019-12-16)
rustc_hash	Rustc version hash	73528e339
cargo	Cargo version	1.40.0 (bc8e4c8be 2019-11-22)
rustup	rustup version	1.21.1 (7832b2ebe 2019-12-20)

Note: rustc_hash output value can be used with actions/cache Action to store cache for different Rust versions, as it is unique across different Rust versions and builds (including nightly).

Profiles

This Action supports rustup profiles, which can be used to speed up the workflow execution by installing the minimally required to be set of components, for example:

- name: Install minimal nightly
  uses: crusty-pie/toolchain@v1
  with:
    profile: minimal
    toolchain: nightly

This Action will automatically run rustup self update if profile input is set and the installed rustup version does not support them.

To provide backwards compatibility for v1 version, there is no value for profile input set by default, which means that the default profile is used by rustup (and that includes rust-docs, clippy and rustfmt).

You may want to consider using profile: minimal to speed up toolchain installation.

Components

This Action supports rustup components too, and in combination with the profiles input it allows to install only the needed components:

- name: Install minimal stable with clippy and rustfmt
  uses: crusty-pie/toolchain@v1
  with:
    profile: minimal
    toolchain: stable
    components: rustfmt, clippy

As an extra perk, rustup >= 1.20.0 is able to find the most recent nightly toolchain with the requested components available; next example is utilizing this feature to install the minimal set of nightly toolchain components with the rustfmt and clippy extras:

- name: Install minimal nightly with clippy and rustfmt
  uses: crusty-pie/toolchain@v1
  with:
    profile: minimal
    toolchain: nightly
    components: rustfmt, clippy

In case if nightly toolchain is requested and one of the components is missing in latest nightly release, this Action will attempt the downgrade till it find the most recent nightly with all components needed.

Note that this behavior will work only if the following two conditions apply:

1. toolchain input is nightly exactly.
2. At least one component is provided in components input.

Same to the profile input, if installed rustup does not support "components" it will be automatically upgraded by this Action.

The toolchain file

This Action supports toolchain files, so it is not necessary to use toolchain input anymore.

Input has higher priority, so if you want to use toolchain file, you need to remove the input from the workflow file.

If neither toolchain input or rust-toolchain file are provided, Action execution will fail.

License

This Action is distributed under the terms of the MIT license. See LICENSE for details.

Contribute and support

Any contributions are welcomed!

If you want to report a bug or have a feature request, check the Contributing guide.