include_data - Include typed data directly in your executable

Sometimes, you want to include data directly in your executable file, but you don't want to translate that data into Rust code that does the static initialization. This is very useful in embedded contexts, or if you have some (usually relatively small) data that will always be needed, and you don't want to deal with loading it from the filesystem and distributing it as a separate file.

The Rust standard library (and core library) contains include_bytes for this purpose. This macro will give you a static reference to a binary array containing the data from a file: that is, a &'static [u8; N].

However, if you want to use your static data, you often want it to be of a particular type, not just a &[u8]. For example, you may know that your included file is a sequence of f64s, or a UTF-32 file, or of some custom type. This crate provides macros for typed compile-time data includes. This is provided by two main macros:

• include_data - outputs any type which is sound
• include_slice - outputs a &'static [T] slice for any T for which this is sound

This crate is no_std and also no-alloc.

Usage

This library will work out-of-the-box with any type that implements bytemuck::AnyBitPattern. This includes:

• Primitive numerical types (u16, i32, f64, etc.)
• Arrays of primitive numerical types (e.g. [f32; N])

For example:

static MY_INTEGER: i32 = include_data!("../tests/test_data/file_exactly_4_bytes_long");
static SOME_TEXT: &[u32] = include_slice!(u32, "../tests/test_data/some_utf-32_file");
const FOUR_BYTES: [u8; 4] = include_data!("../tests/test_data/file_exactly_4_bytes_long");

Note that include_data can assign to const, while include_slice cannot.

Aliases are provided for include_slice for primitive number types, using them is a matter of personal preference. For example:

static SOME_TEXT: &[u32] = include_u32s!("../tests/test_data/some_utf-32_file");

Usage with custom types

You can include data in any custom type you like. The best way of doing this is if your custom type satisfies the requirements for bytemuck::AnyBitPattern, in which case you can simply use include_data.

#[repr(C)]
#[derive(Copy, Clone)]
struct Foo {
    integer: u16,
    pair: [u8; 2],
}

// Safety: the requirements for `AnyBitPattern` have been manually checked.
unsafe impl bytemuck::Zeroable for Foo {}
unsafe impl bytemuck::AnyBitPattern for Foo {}

static FOO_DATA: Foo = include_data!("../tests/test_data/file_exactly_4_bytes_long");

Alternatively, if your type cannot implement bytemuck::AnyBitPattern (especially if it is a foreign type over which you have no control), include_unsafe can be used. In this case, you must guarantee that the file included is valid for the target type. This may depend on host platform, compiler version, and compiler profile (amongst other things): recall that Rust does not have a stable ABI. Clearly, this is very unsafe and should be avoided if possible.

#[repr(C)]
struct StructWithPadding {
    byte: u8,
    two_bytes: u16,
}

// Safety: we guarantee that the included file contains bytes which are
// a valid bit-pattern for our struct, when compiled on this host.
static BAR_DATA: StructWithPadding = unsafe { include_unsafe!("../tests/test_data/file_exactly_4_bytes_long") };

Safety

All macros exported by this crate are safe, except include_unsafe (assuming, of course, that implementations of bytemuck::AnyBitPattern are sound). If the input file size does not match the target type (or is not divisible by it, in the case of slices) or the file cannot be read, compilation will fail.

include_unsafe is very unsafe and should only be used with great care. See the documentation for full details.

Platform-specific behaviour

The interpretation of multi-byte sequences depends on a machine's endianness. In the case of these macros, multi-byte sequences will be interpreted into types according to the endianness of the compilation target, not the compilation host machine.

The interpreation of paths passed to these macros is host-platform specific and identical to that of include_bytes.

MSRV

The Minimum Supported Rust Version is 1.64.0.

Note that this crate is tested against a pinned version of the compiler, simply because many tests check exact error messages. The current pinned version for testing purposes can be found in rust-toolchain.toml.

Alternatives

Depending on what you're trying to achieve, this crate might not be the best choice. Here are a few alternatives which may be more appropriate depending on the situation:

• static_toml: if the data you're including fits within a toml spec, this crate parses it at compile time and includes the result as static, type-safe, data.
• const_gen: tool that helps you use build.rs to do compile-time code generation of constant values. More complicated and verbose than include_data, but also more flexible.
• The standard library has OnceLock and LazyLock both of which can be used to assign complex values to statics, but do so at runtime and with a non-zero runtime cost. If your type needs runtime construction, these are very good chocies but include_data is cheaper for "simple typed data" values.

If you know of any others, please drop an issue or open a PR.

Prior art

The techniques used by this crate were published in a blog post by Jack Wrenn. Some of those techniques were original to Jack, while others were found in forum threads linked from that post. Please do reach out if you are somebody involved with these discussions, or have any prior work in this area. I am also grateful to Jack for comments on an earlier draft of this crate.