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bjorn3
rustc_codegen_cranelift
Rust2019–2023
bjorn3 / rustc_codegen_cranelift

rustc_codegen_cranelift

You are probably looking for the upstream version of rustc_codegen_cranelift

22Distinct people
25Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
19GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

You are probably looking for the upstream version of rustc_codegen_cranelift

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 2:59:53 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year25 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2019-04-11 23:02:32 UTC to 2023-08-17 22:36:36 UTC.

02462019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2023

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC413
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Cranelift codegen backend for rust The goal of this project is to create an alternative codegen backend for the rust compiler based on Cranelift. This has the potential to improve compilation times in debug mode. If your project doesn't use any of the things listed under "Not yet supported", it should work fine. If not please open an issue. Download using Rustup The Cranelift codegen backend is distributed in nightly builds on Linux and x86_64 macOS. If you want to install it using Rustup, you can do that by running: $ rustup component add rustc-codegen-cranelift-preview --toolchain nightly Once it is installed, you can enable it with one of the following approaches: CARGO_PROFILE_DEV_CODEGEN_BACKEND=cranelift cargo +nightly build -Zcodegen-backend RUSTFLAGS="-Zcodegen-backend=cranelift" cargo +nightly build Add the following to .cargo/config.toml: [unstable] codegen-backend = true [profile.dev] codegen-backend = "cranelift" Add the following to Cargo.toml: # This line needs to come before anything else in Cargo.toml cargo-features = ["codegen-backend"] [profile.dev] codegen-backend = "cranelift" Precompiled builds You can also download a pre-built version from the releases page. Extract the dist directory in the archive anywhere you want. If you want to use cargo clif build instead of having to specify the full path to the cargo-clif executable, you can add the bin subdirectory of the extracted dist directory to your PATH. (tutorial for Windows, and for Linux/MacOS). Building and testing If you want to build the backend manually, you can download it from GitHub and build it yourself: $ git clone https://github.com/rust-lang/rustc_codegen_cranelift $ cd rustc_codegen_cranelift $ ./y.sh prepare $ ./y.sh build To run the test suite replace the last command with: $ ./test.sh For more docs on how to build and test see build_system/usage.txt or the help message of ./y.sh. Platform support OS \ architecture x86_64 AArch64 Riscv64 s390x (System-Z) Linux ✅ ✅ ✅1 ✅1 FreeBSD ✅1 ❓ ❓ ❓ AIX ❌2 N/A N/A ❌2 Other unixes ❓ ❓ ❓ ❓ macOS ✅ ✅1 N/A N/A Windows ✅1 ❌ N/A N/A ✅: Fully supported and tested ❓: Maybe supported, not tested ❌: Not supported at all Not all targets are available as rustup component for nightly. See notes in the platform support matrix. Usage rustc_codegen_cranelift can be used as a near-drop-in replacement for cargo build or cargo run for existing projects. Assuming $cg_clif_dir is the directory you cloned this repo into and you followed the instructions (y.sh prepare and y.sh build or test.sh). In the directory with your project (where you can do the usual cargo build), run: $ $cg_clif_dir/dist/cargo-clif build This will build your project with rustc_codegen_cranelift instead of the usual LLVM backend. For additional ways to use rustc_codegen_cranelift like the JIT mode see usage.md. Building and testing with changes in rustc code See rustc_testing.md. Not yet supported SIMD (tracked here, std::simd fully works, std::arch is partially supported) Unwinding on panics (no cranelift support, -Cpanic=abort is enabled by default) License Licensed under either of Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0) MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT) at your option. Contribution Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions. Footnotes Not available as rustup component for nightly. You can build it yourself. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 XCOFF object file format is not supported. ↩ ↩2
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

7 sources
Similarly you can compile Rust in "edition = 2015" or "edition = 2018" and soon "edition = 2021" to guard against changes in the language, e.g. adding keywords. There are already alternative compilers, though most of them are WIP, e.g. mrustc[1], rust front-end for gcc[2][3], or using cranelift[4] for the back-end. [1] https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc [2] https://github.com/sapir/gcc-rust/tree/rust [3] https://github.com/Rust-GCC/gccrs [4] https://github.com/bjorn3/rustc_codegen_cranelift
In AWS hires Rust compiler team co-lead Felix Klock
Experiments with a post-link optimization pass (for rearranging symbols in the binary for optimal access patterns, e.g. BOLT) have suggested another 5% speedup is possible. If LLD ever gets enabled by default that could be another 25-50% off when compared to the system linker (e.g. https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/39915#issuecomment-... ). And so far Cranelift ( https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/77975 ) shows about 20-30% improvement on debug builds, keeping in mind that what it's gaining from doing less optimizations is being partially offset by giving the linker more to chew on; using Cranelift in conjunction with LLD can give much better results ( https://github.com/bjorn3/rustc_codegen_cranelift/issues/878... ).
In Exploring PGO for the Rust Compiler
No mention of the work being done on the CraneLift backend for Rust. [0] That seems like a great solution: have one compiler that runs quickly, for development, and have a different compiler for release builds, capable of state-of-the-art optimisation. My understanding is that compile times can be greatly improved simply by using a faster (and less optimising) code-generator, even without doing the (presumably much harder) work of optimising Rust's borrower-checker. Disclaimer: I don't know all that much about Rust. [0] https://github.com/bjorn3/rustc_codegen_cranelift
In How to speed up the Rust compiler some more in 2020
The multiple implementation story of Rust isn't as great as some older languages, but it's getting there. There are at least two e2e implementations of Rust: - rustc, the reference implementation. - mrustc, an alternative written in C++ [1]. There are also multiple implementations Rust's IR (MIR): - rustc compiles MIR to LLVM. - A backend that compiles MIR to Cranelift [2]. - Miri, a MIR interpreter used for dynamic analysis [3]. mrustc doesn't perform the borrow check, so it can't prevent you from triggering UB like rustc. But you can use rustc for the borrow check and mrustc for codegen. [1]: https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc [2]: https://github.com/bjorn3/rustc_codegen_cranelift [3]: https://github.com/rust-lang/miri
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