Chromium Docs

Rust in Chromium

Why?

Handling untrustworthy data in non-trivial ways is a major source of security bugs, and it‘s therefore against Chromium’s security policies to do it in the Browser or Gpu process unless you are working in a memory-safe language.

Rust provides a cross-platform memory-safe language so that all platforms can handle untrustworthy data directly from a privileged process, without the performance overheads and complexity of a utility process.

Status

The Rust toolchain is enabled for and supports all platforms and development environments that are supported by the Chromium project. The first milestone to include full production-ready support was M119.

Rust is approved by Chrome ATLs for production use in certain third-party scenarios.

For questions or help, reach out to rust-dev@chromium.org or #rust on the Chromium Slack.

If you use VSCode, we have additional advice below.

Adding a third-party Rust library

Third-party libraries are pulled from crates.io, but Chromium does not use Cargo as a build system.

Third-party review

All third-party crates need to go through third-party review. See //docs/adding_to_third_party.md for instructions on how to have a library reviewed.

Importing a crate from crates.io

The //third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io/Cargo.toml file defines the set of crates depended on from first-party code. Any transitive dependencies will be found from those listed there. The file is a standard Cargo.toml file, though the crate itself is never built, it is only used to collect dependencies through the [dependencies] section.

To use a third-party crate “bar” version 3 from first party code:

  1. Change directory to the root src/ dir of Chromium.
  2. Add the crate to //third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io/Cargo.toml:
    • vpython3 ./tools/crates/run_gnrt.py add foo to add the latest version of foo.
    • vpython3 ./tools/crates/run_gnrt.py add foo@1.2.3 to add a specific version of foo.
    • Or, directly through (nightly) cargo: cargo run --release --manifest-path tools/crates/gnrt/Cargo.toml --target-dir out/gnrt add foo
    • Or, edit the Cargo.toml by hand, finding the version you want from crates.io.
  3. Download the crate's files:
    • ./tools/crates/run_gnrt.py vendor to download the new crate.
    • Or, directly through (nightly) cargo: cargo run --release --manifest-path tools/crates/gnrt/Cargo.toml --target-dir out/gnrt vendor
    • This will also apply any patches in //third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io/patches for the crates. If a patch can not apply, the crate's download will be cancelled and an error will be printed. See patching errors below for how to resolve this.
  4. Add the new files to git:
    • git add -f third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io
    • The -f is important, as files may be skipped otherwise from a .gitignore inside the crate.
  5. (optional) If the crate is only to be used by tests and tooling, then specify the "test" group in //third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io/gnrt_config.toml:
    [crate.foo]
group = "test"
  6. Generate the BUILD.gn file for the new crate:
    • vpython3 ./tools/crates/run_gnrt.py gen
    • Or, directly through (nightly) cargo: cargo run --release --manifest-path tools/crates/gnrt/Cargo.toml --target-dir out/gnrt gen
  7. Verify if all new dependencies are already audited by running cargo vet See rust-unsafe.md#cargo-vet-policy for more details. This boils down to:
    • ./tools/crates/run_cargo_vet.py check
    • If check fails, then there are missing audits, which need to be added to //third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io/supply-chain/audits.toml.
  8. Upload the CL. If there is any unsafe usage then Security experts will need to audit the “ub-risk” level. See rust-unsafe.md#code-review-policy for more details.

Cargo features

To enable a feature “spaceships” in the crate, change the entry in //third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io/Cargo.toml to include the feature:

[dependencies]
bar = { version = "3", features = [ "spaceships" ] }

Patching third-party crates

You may patch a crate in tree, but save any changes made into a diff file in a //third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io/patches/ directory for the crate. The diff file should be generated by git-format-patch each new patch numbered consecutively so that they can be applied in order. For example, these files might exist if the “foo” crate was patched with a couple of changes:

//third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io/patches/foo/patches/0001-Edit-the-Cargo-toml.diff
//third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io/patches/foo/patches/0002-Other-changes.diff

The recommended procedure to create such patches is:

  1. Commit the plain new version of the crate to your local git branch
  2. Modify the crate as necessary
  3. Commit that modified version
  4. Use git format-patch <unpatched version> to generate the patch files
  5. Add the patch files in a new, third, commit
  6. Squash them, or rely on git cl upload doing so

Patching errors

If gnrt vendor fails to apply a patch for a crate, it will cancel the download of that crate rather than leave it in a broken state. To recreate patches, first get a pristine copy of the crate by using the --no-patches argument:

  1. Download the crate without applying patches:
    • vpython3 ./tools/crates/run_gnrt.py vendor --no-patches=<CRATE_NAME>
  2. Then recreate the patches as described in Patching third-party crates.

To verify the patches work, remove the vendored crate directory in //third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io/vendor/, named after the crate name and version. Then run the vendor action without --no-patches which will download the crate and apply the patches:

  • vpython3 ./tools/crates/run_gnrt.py vendor

Security

If a shipping library needs security review (has any unsafe), and the review finds it‘s not satisfying the rule of 2, then move it to the "sandbox" group in //third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io/gnrt_config.toml to make it clear it can’t be used in a privileged process:

[crate.foo]
group = "sandbox"

If a transitive dependency moves from "safe" to "sandbox" and causes a dependency chain across the groups, it will break the gnrt vendor step. You will need to fix the new crate so that it's deemed safe in unsafe review, or move the other dependent crates out of "safe" as well by setting their group in gnrt_config.toml.

Updating existing third-party crates

Third-party crates will get updated semi-automatically through the process described in ../tools/crates/create_update_cl.md. If you nevertheless need to manually update a crate to its latest minor version, then follow the steps below:

  1. Change directory to the root src/ dir of Chromium.
  2. Update the versions in //third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io/Cargo.toml.
    • vpython3 ./tools/crates/run_gnrt.py update <crate name>
    • Or, directly through (nightly) cargo: cargo run --release --manifest-path tools/crates/gnrt/Cargo.toml --target-dir out/gnrt update <crate name>
  3. Download any updated crate's files:
    • ./tools/crates/run_gnrt.py vendor
    • If you want to restrict the update to certain crates, add the crate names as arguments to vendor, like: ./tools/crates/run_gnrt.py vendor <crate-name>
    • Or, directly through (nightly) cargo: cargo run --release --manifest-path tools/crates/gnrt/Cargo.toml --target-dir out/gnrt vendor
  4. Add the downloaded files to git:
    • git add -f third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io/vendor
    • The -f is important, as files may be skipped otherwise from a .gitignore inside the crate.
  5. If a crate in //third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io/patches was updated as part of vendoring, then reapply patches to it:
    • Go to the //third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io directory.
    • ./apply_patches.sh (this currently requires linux).
  6. Generate the BUILD.gn files
    • vpython3 ./tools/crates/run_gnrt.py gen
    • Or, directly through (nightly) cargo: cargo run --release --manifest-path tools/crates/gnrt/Cargo.toml --target-dir out/gnrt gen
  7. Add the generated files to git:
    • git add -f third_party/rust

Directory structure for third-party crates

The directory structure for a crate “foo” version 3.4.2 is:

//third_party/
    rust/
        foo/  (for the "foo" crate)
            v3/  (version 3.4.2 maps to the v3 epoch)
                BUILD.gn  (generated by gnrt gen)
                README.chromium  (generated by gnrt vendor)
        chromium_crates_io/
            vendor/
                foo-3.4.2  (crate sources downloaded from crates.io)
            patches/
                foo/  (patches for the "foo" crate)
                    0001-Edit-the-Cargo-toml.diff
                    0002-Other-changes.diff
            Cargo.toml
            Cargo.lock
            gnrt_config.toml

Writing a wrapper for binding generation

Most Rust libraries will need a more C++-friendly API written on top of them in order to generate C++ bindings to them. The wrapper library can be placed in //third_party/rust/<cratename>/<epoch>/wrapper or at another single place that all C++ goes through to access the library. The CXX is used to generate bindings between C++ and Rust.

See //third_party/rust/serde_json_lenient/v0_1/wrapper/ and //components/qr_code_generator for examples.

Rust libraries should use the rust_static_library GN template (not the built-in rust_library) to integrate properly into the mixed-language Chromium build and get the correct compiler options applied to them.

The CXX tool is used for generating C++ bindings to Rust code. Since it requires explicit declarations in Rust, an wrapper shim around a pure Rust library is needed. Add these Rust shims that contain the CXX bridge macro to the cxx_bindings GN variable in the rust_static_library to have CXX generate a C++ header for that file. To include the C++ header file, rooted in the gen output directory, use

#include "the/path/to/the/rust/file.rs.h"

Debugging hints

There are not yet Rust wrappers for Chromium‘s base logging APIs. We recommend use of Rust’s standard eprintln and dbg macros.

Using VSCode

  1. Ensure you're using the rust-analyzer extension for VSCode, rather than earlier forms of Rust support.
  2. Run gn with the --export-rust-project flag, such as: gn gen out/Release --export-rust-project.
  3. ln -s out/Release/rust-project.json rust-project.json
  4. When you run VSCode, or any other IDE that uses rust-analyzer it should detect the rust-project.json and use this to give you rich browsing, autocompletion, type annotations etc. for all the Rust within the Chromium codebase.
  5. Point rust-analyzer to the rust toolchain in Chromium. Otherwise you will need to install Rustc in your system, and Chromium uses the nightly compiler, so you would need that to match. Add the following to .vscode/settings.json in the Chromium checkout:
    {
   // The rest of the settings...

   "rust-analyzer.cargo.extraEnv": {
     "PATH": "../../third_party/rust-toolchain/bin:$PATH",
   }
}
    This assumes you are working with an output directory like out/Debug which has two levels; adjust the number of .. in the path according to your own setup.

Using cargo

If you are building a throwaway or experimental tool, you might like to use pure cargo tooling rather than gn and ninja. Even then, you may choose to restrict yourself to the toolchain and crates that are already approved for use in Chromium.

Here's how.

export PATH_TO_CHROMIUM_SRC=~/chromium/src
mkdir my-rust-tool
cd my-rust-tool
mkdir .cargo
cat <<END > .cargo/config.toml
[source.crates-io]
replace-with = "vendored-sources"

[source.vendored-sources]
directory = "$PATH_TO_CHROMIUM_SRC/third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io/vendor"
END
$PATH_TO_CHROMIUM_SRC/third_party/rust-toolchain/bin/cargo init --offline
$PATH_TO_CHROMIUM_SRC/third_party/rust-toolchain/bin/cargo run --offline

Most cargo tooling works well with this setup; one exception is cargo add, but you can still add dependencies manually to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
log = "0.4"