Skip to content

rustc internals docs clarification #2839

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
amanjeev merged 3 commits into from
Apr 19, 2026
Merged

rustc internals docs clarification #2839

Changes from 1 commit
Commits
Show all changes
3 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
a860662
Clarifications and instructions - nightly
amanjeev Apr 18, 2026
dd8e760
Typo in crate name
amanjeev Apr 18, 2026
6f9e33b
PR review: use better command
amanjeev Apr 18, 2026
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
15 changes: 15 additions & 0 deletions src/rustc-driver/external-rustc-drivers.md
View file
Open in desktop
Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

@tshepang tshepang Apr 18, 2026 •
edited
Loading

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

I see there is a rustup component that includes compiler api docs, rustc-docs

❯ rustup component add rustc-docs
info: downloading component rustc-docs
   rustc-docs installed                       32.34 MiB
❯ rustup doc --rustc-docs
Opening docs named `rustc-docs` in your browser

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member Author

@amanjeev amanjeev Apr 18, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

In my experience this did not add the internal rustc docs.

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

@tshepang tshepang Apr 18, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

the component was added several weeks ago, and yeah, it does not exist for your example nightly

Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -71,6 +71,21 @@ When developing out-of-tree projects that use `rustc_private` crates, you can co

This configuration allows `rust-analyzer` to properly recognize and provide IDE support for `rustc_private` crates in out-of-tree projects.

### Getting Specific Nightly Documentation for `rustc_private`

The nightly-rustc internal crates' documentation is only available for the latest nightly. If you depend on compiler internals from an older nightly, you may want to refer to the internal documentation from that particular nightly. The only way to do this is to generate the documentation locally. For example, to get documentation for `nightly-2025-11-08`:
Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

@tshepang tshepang Apr 20, 2026 •
edited by rustbot
Loading

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

  • this does not make it clear what nightly-rustc means... I assume that it means from the website
  • it should at least mention that the docs are available via rustup

View changes since the review


Get the Git commit hash for that nightly:

```sh
rustup toolchain install nightly-2025-11-08
rustup default nightly-2025-11-08
rustc -Vv
Comment thread
amanjeev marked this conversation as resolved.
Outdated
```

The output will include a `commit-hash` line identifying the exact source revision. Check out `rust-lang/rust` at that commit, then follow the steps in [compiler documentation](../building/compiler-documenting.md).


### Additional Resources

- [GitHub Issue #137421] explains that `rustc_private` linker failures often occur because `llvm-tools` is not installed
Expand Down