Install: add a bindir flag or similar

[1480c1]

Problem

Currently, "bin" is always suffixed onto the root, meaning it's really hard when trying to deal with installing binaries from a project into a separate directly, that's not specifically bin (for example, if I have a video related tool, I might install it into $root/bin-video, and $root/bin-audio for an audio related tool, and so on).

I currently have to do something like

cargo build --release ...
install -D -p target/*/release/*.exe "$root/bin-video"

and that's not very desirable and very fragile.

I tried looking to see if a similar issue existed, but could not find anything yet.

Proposed Solution

One solution would be to add a flag to cargo install that would take a relative path to --root, and if not provided, default to "bin", and that would be used in the below code locations instead of the current contant strings.

cargo/src/cargo/ops/cargo_install.rs

Line 78 in 6b8e192

let dst = root.join("bin").into_path_unlocked();

cargo/src/cargo/ops/cargo_install.rs

Line 567 in 6b8e192

let dst = root.join("bin").into_path_unlocked();

cargo/src/cargo/ops/cargo_install.rs

Line 279 in 6b8e192

let dst = self.root.join("bin").into_path_unlocked();

So, something like --root /mycustomprefix --bindir bin-video would install the executables into /mycustomprefix/bin-video instead of /mycustomprefix/bin

Notes

No response

[weihanglo]

One purpose of cargo having --root option ¹ is for tracking installed binaries. Unfortunately, the current version of InstallInfo ² doesn't record installed path. We might need to come up with a compatible solution if we go the way you proposed.

At this moment, you can use JSON message format with jq to get a stable path for your binaries, such like

# Use at your own risk
cargo build --message-format=json -q | jq -r 'select(.target.kind[0] == "bin") | .executable'

Footnotes

1. https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html#installroot ↩

2. https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/blob/6b8e1922261bbed1894bf40069fb2d5dc8d62fb0/src/cargo/ops/common_for_install_and_uninstall.rs#L60-L85 ↩

[weihanglo]

If you are willing to share with us, we would like to know more about the practical use case for separate bin dirs.

• What is the reason behind this?
  • Why those binaries can't put altogether?
  • Is it about distributions or permission controls?
• Do you need to track installed binaries?

Given it sounds like a specialized use case, it's more likely to move forward if more details are provided. Thank you.

[epage]

https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/pre-rfc-split-cargo-home/19747 might offer a way to workaround this.