Documents managing tools in the Rust repo

Author: nrc

tools-in-rust-repo.md

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+# Maintaining tools in the Rust repository
+
+This document contains information for tool maintainers and Rust contributors
+who need to work with tools that are part of the Rust distribution and
+repository. For information on requirements for such tools see the
+[stability docs](https://github.com/nrc/dev-tools-team/blob/master/stability/README.md).
+
+When adding tools or making significant changes, please be sure to cc @nrc and
+@aclexcrichton on PRs. Adding tools to the Rust repo requires approval from the
+dev-tools team and sign-off from the core team.
+
+
+## Repository layout
+
+Tools should live in their own repository which should be in an official
+organisation (e.g., [rust-lang-nursery](https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery)).
+Tools should be included into the Rust repository as a Git submodule in the
+[src/tools](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/tree/master/src/tools) directory.
+
+
+## Constraints on tools
+
+It is essential that any commit used as a submodule in the Rust repo is
+preserved forever (i.e., is *never* deleted or changed). This ensures that we
+will continue to be able to build any historic release of Rust (which is
+important for bisecting regressions, etc). In order to do this, any commit
+pulled into the Rust repo as a submodule must be from a Rust organisation repo,
+not an author's. If the commit is only on a branch, that branch cannot be
+deleted. Whether the commit is on a branch or master, it cannot be rebased
+(which essentially deletes the commit and creates a new one).
+
+Tools used in the Rust repo cannot use Cargo workspaces. This is because the
+tool itself will be treated as a workspace crate and workspaces cannot be
+nested.
+
+
+## Making breaking changes
+
+If making a change to a 'core' part of Rust causes breakage in any of the tools,
+then there is a bit of a dance to perform to land the Rust PR.
+
+Communication is key here! If you're a compiler dev, communicate with tool devs
+as soon as possible (and vice versa).
+
+At the end of the day, the tool's maintainers are responsible for ensuring that
+their tool continues to build and pass tests in the Rust repo. For non-trivial
+fixes, tool devs should be happy to help fix breaking changes.
+
+How to land a breaking change:
+
+* Make your changes to the Rust repo
+* Make changes to the tool (against its own repo, not the submodule in the Rust
+  repo) to address the breaking changes.
+    - check that the tool's tests pass inside the Rust repo
+    - either push a branch to the tool's repo or submit a PR
+* Point the Rust submodule at the new tool commit
+* Land the PR
+* Wait for the PR to be included in a nightly release...
+* Merge the tool commit to the tool's master branch
+    - if the commit was changed or rebased, **do not delete** the commit's branch
+* Create a new PR to the Rust repo pointing the tool submodule back to tool's
+  master tip; land it.
+
+When changing the tool submodule, make sure that any other commits are OK to
+land (i.e., they are not work in progress and tests pass, etc.).
+
+
+### Exceptions
+
+Rarely, a breaking change might be too complex to manage in the above fashion.
+In such cases it is OK to temporarily stop building and testing the tool while
+the tool devs fix the issue.
+
+* If you think this is necessary, you must communicate this to the tool's
+  maintainers, the dev-tools team, and the compiler team before landing the PR
+  (and preferably before starting the work).
+* Try and do this early in the release cycle to give the maximum amount of time
+  to fix the tool before the beta uplift.
+* It is never OK to do this on beta or stable branches.
+* Avoid doing this, if you can.
+
+The steps to follow are similar to the previous steps, but you must comment out
+code in the build system as needed, rather than change the submodule, when
+landing your initial PR.
+
+
+## Building and testing a tool
+
+After adding the tool as a submodule, you'll need to make some changes to the
+build system to build and test the tool, and to have it distributed with Rustup.
+
+For all these changes, it is probably easiest to see how it is done for an
+existing tool and try and copy that where possible. You can try grepping for
+`rls` and `Rls` inside [src/bootstrap](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/tree/master/src/bootstrap).
+
+To build the tool you'll need to add the tool as a workspace to `src/Cargo.toml`
+and make several changes to `src/bootstrap/tool.rs`.
+
+To run a tool's tests, you'll need to make changes to `src/bootstrap/check.rs`.
+
+You probably want the 'tidy' script not to check your tool, to do that you'll
+need to add the tool directory to the skip list in `src/tools/tidy/src/lib.rs`.
+
+
+## Distribution
+
+To include a tool as a Rustup component you have to ensure that a tarball of the
+compiled tool is created and put in the right place, and that there is an entry
+in the Rustup manifest (generated by the build system). You don't need to make
+any changes to Rustup itself. You'll need to edit `src/bootstrap/dist.rs` and
+`src/bootstrap/install.rs`.
+
+
+## Tips
+
+Rustbuild will update submodules as part of its build process. If you don't
+commit the change, it will be overwritten. Therefore, you should either commit
+after updating a submodule and before building, or set `submodules = false` in
+`config.toml`.
+
+After making changes to `Cargo.toml`, you need to build to ensure `Cargo.lock`
+is updated. Changes to `Cargo.lock` must be committed along with `Cargo.toml`
+changes.
+
+To run tests for a tool, use `./x.py check src/tools/rls`. Note that it is
+possible for tool tests to pass in their own CI, but fail when run inside the
+Rust repo because of the different environment.
+
+
+## People who can help you
+
+Usernames are for irc/GitHub.
+
+* Any questions - nrc/@nrc or ask in #rust-dev-tools
+* Rustbuild - simulacrum/@Mark-Simulacrum, acrichto/@alexcrichton, or ask in #rust-infra
+* Compiler issues - ask in #rustc, if you need a specific person try mw or nmatsakis.
+* Rust distribution - acrichto/@alexcrichton
+* Rustfmt or RLS - nrc/@nrc
+* Clippy - Manishearth/@Manishearth or oli-obk/@oli-obk