include-repo

The include_repo rust crate provides a macro which embeds all files in the project's git repository into the final executable. It does not embed git history nor metadata, but rather includes a tarball much like git archive would produce.

Why might you want this? Well, the primary use-case I can think of (and in fact what I built it for) is to provide an AGPL compliance endpoint.

Providing the source code for your software is trivial if the source code is built into the binary.

Usage

This crate is easy to use. Simply include the following in your code somewhere:

use include:repo::include_repo;

const SOURCE_CODE: &[u8] = include_repo!();
// Expands to:
// const SOURCE_CODE: &[u8] = [128, 80, ...];
// The bag of bytes is a tarball, so serve it with a .tar extension please!

If you don't wish to include quite every file, that's also possible. For example, if you don't want to include contents in your 'img' and 'third_party' folders, that can be done like so:

use include:repo::include_repo;

const SOURCE_CODE: &[u8] = include_repo!(".", ":!/img/", ":!/third_party");
// Any valid pathspec (see
// https://git-scm.com/docs/gitglossary#gitglossary-aiddefpathspecapathspec) may
// be used. Pathspecs *must* be string literals. Any number may be provided to
// the macro.
// The "." portion is optional on newer versions of git, but for backwards
// compatibility it's best to add it if all other pathspecs are exclusions.

If you want the tarball to be gzipped, use the include_repo_gz! macro instead. If you don't already have gzip decompression included in your binary, you may find it easier to shell out to tar -xzv -f - when the source is requested, or provide a .tar.gz file to users.

Assumptions

The following assumptions must be true for this crate to work correctly:

• You use git for version control and have a modern version of git in your PATH
• You want to provide your source code as a tarball (optionally gzipped), not a zip or something
• You want your code embedded as a giant const in your binary (not e.g. a static file on disk)
• You don't mind a proc macro running 'git' as part of your build

License

This code is conveniently available under the AGPL.