SESean1708·Dec 3, 2018
Are you aware of cbindgen[0]? It's not exactly what you want, but it's certainly far closer than wasm-bindgen is.
[0]: https://github.com/eqrion/cbindgen
In How I Wrote a Modern C++ Library in Rustmozilla
cbindgen
Rust2017–2025
mozilla / cbindgen
cbindgen
A project for generating C bindings from Rust code
15Distinct people
15Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
3KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A project for generating C bindings from Rust code
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
- rust-lang/rust-bindgen · linked in 5 of the same 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, 5:03:38 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 year15 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2017-09-07 21:18:48 UTC to 2025-07-02 12:43:03 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
4 sourcesThere are a couple of projects that do this for Rust, depending on what your inputs and outputs are:
* https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/rust-bindgen - Inputs are C/C++ headers, outputs are Rust type definitions and extern functions to interoperate with the type and functions in the headers
* https://github.com/immunant/c2rust - Inputs are C headers and source, outputs Rust code that is semantically equivalent to the C (modulo bugs, etc.)
* https://github.com/eqrion/cbindgen/ - Inputs are Rust source, outputs C/C++ headers that can be used to interoperate with the types and functions exposed by Rust
In The Dark Arts of Advanced and Unsafe Rust ProgrammingThere's a tool called cbindgen (https://github.com/eqrion/cbindgen) that generates header files from rust code . It's a bit experimental.
The reverse tool, bindgen (https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/rust-bindgen/) is more mature -- generates rust bindings from header files.
In Relibc: C Library in Rust for Redox and LinuxI wrote on a similar topic [1], about writing system libraries in Rust with a C API and bindings to other languages.
Which covers a bit of this, plus some of the sharp edges of FFI. Most of the trickier parts of it are covered in the FFI omnibus [2]. Also worth checking out is the cbindgen tool [3].
[1]: https://libpasta.github.io/blog/bindings/
[2]: http://jakegoulding.com/rust-ffi-omnibus/
[3]: https://github.com/eqrion/cbindgen
In Relibc: C Library in Rust for Redox and Linux