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rustc: document the jobserver
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Explicitly document that the jobserver may be used by `rustc` and show
the warning to increase the chances that this document is found when
searching for solutions online.

In particular, add a section about the interaction with build systems,
which is intended to contain recommendations on how to integrate `rustc`
with different built systems.

For GNU Make, recommend using the `+` indicator. In addition, add a
note about the issue with GNU Make 4.3 since it is important that users
realize they should do this even if they do not expect parallelism from
`rustc`.  Finally, show how to workaround the issue of `$(shell ...)`
calls in recursive Make (which e.g. was needed for the Linux kernel).

The GNU Make 4.4 case under `--jobserver-style=pipe` is not added since
it got fixed after Rust 1.76.0 already (i.e. `rustc` will not warn if
it finds the negative file descriptors).

For CMake, recommend using `JOB_SERVER_AWARE` and show a workaround using
`$(MAKE)` for earlier versions (when using the Makefile generator).

From: #120515
Cc: @petrochenkov @belovdv @weihanglo @bjorn3
Signed-off-by: Miguel Ojeda <[email protected]>
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1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions src/doc/rustc/src/SUMMARY.md
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- [What is rustc?](what-is-rustc.md)
- [Command-line Arguments](command-line-arguments.md)
- [Codegen Options](codegen-options/index.md)
- [Jobserver](jobserver.md)
- [Lints](lints/index.md)
- [Lint Levels](lints/levels.md)
- [Lint Groups](lints/groups.md)
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86 changes: 86 additions & 0 deletions src/doc/rustc/src/jobserver.md
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# Jobserver

Internally, `rustc` may take advantage of parallelism. `rustc` will coordinate
with the build system calling it if a [GNU Make jobserver] is passed in the
`MAKEFLAGS` environment variable. Other flags may have an effect as well, such
as [`CARGO_MAKEFLAGS`]. If a jobserver is not passed, then `rustc` will choose
the number of jobs to use.

Starting with Rust 1.76.0, `rustc` will warn if a jobserver appears to be
available but is not accessible, e.g.:

```console
$ echo 'fn main() {}' | MAKEFLAGS=--jobserver-auth=3,4 rustc -
warning: failed to connect to jobserver from environment variable `MAKEFLAGS="--jobserver-auth=3,4"`: cannot open file descriptor 3 from the jobserver environment variable value: Bad file descriptor (os error 9)
|
= note: the build environment is likely misconfigured
```

## Integration with build systems

The following subsections contain recommendations on how to integrate `rustc`
with build systems so that the jobserver is handled appropriately.

### GNU Make

When calling `rustc` from GNU Make, it is recommended that all `rustc`
invocations are marked as recursive in the `Makefile` (by prefixing the command
line with the `+` indicator), so that GNU Make enables the jobserver for them.
For instance:

<!-- ignore-tidy-tab -->

```make
x:
+@echo 'fn main() {}' | rustc -
```

In particular, GNU Make 4.3 (a widely used version as of 2024) passes a simple
pipe jobserver in `MAKEFLAGS` even when it was not made available for the child
process, which in turn means `rustc` will warn about it. For instance, if the
`+` indicator is removed from the example above and GNU Make is called with e.g.
`make -j2`, then the aforementioned warning will trigger.

For calls to `rustc` inside `$(shell ...)` inside a recursive Make, one can
disable the jobserver manually by clearing the `MAKEFLAGS` variable, e.g.:

```make
S := $(shell MAKEFLAGS= rustc --print sysroot)

x:
@$(MAKE) y

y:
@echo $(S)
```

### CMake

CMake 3.28 supports the `JOB_SERVER_AWARE` option in its [`add_custom_target`]
command, e.g.:

```cmake
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.28)
project(x)
add_custom_target(x
JOB_SERVER_AWARE TRUE
COMMAND echo 'fn main() {}' | rustc -
)
```

For earlier versions, when using CMake with the Makefile generator, one
workaround is to have [`$(MAKE)`] somewhere in the command so that GNU Make
treats it as a recursive Make call, e.g.:

```cmake
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.22)
project(x)
add_custom_target(x
COMMAND DUMMY_VARIABLE=$(MAKE) echo 'fn main() {}' | rustc -
)
```

[GNU Make jobserver]: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/POSIX-Jobserver.html
[`CARGO_MAKEFLAGS`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/environment-variables.html
[`add_custom_target`]: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/command/add_custom_target.html
[`$(MAKE)`]: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/MAKE-Variable.html

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