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Getting Started

To inform cross it is using a remote container engine, set the environment variable CROSS_REMOTE=1. Rather than use bind mounts to mount local volumes into the filesystem, it copies data from the local filesystem into data volumes on the remote host, ensuring all mounted volumes are present on the remote filesystem in the same location as they would be present on the host. A sample use with docker is:

CROSS_REMOTE=1 DOCKER_HOST=tcp://docker:2375/ cross build --target arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf

If using docker contexts, you do not need to provide DOCKER_HOST. This also works with podman and podman-remote. For podman remote, make sure the connection is added to podman, and if using a connection that requires authentication, that it is set to the default identity, and that you do not use an identity (to avoid being prompted for a password on every command).

An example with podman is:

podman system connection add cross tcp://localhost:8080 --default=true
CROSS_REMOTE=1 CROSS_CONTAINER_ENGINE=podman cross build --target arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf

Any command using podman can be replaced with podman-remote. Cross automatically detects if podman or podman-remote is being used, and adds in the --remote flag if needed.

Data Volumes

Since we cannot use bind mounts directly, we create a data volume mounted at /cross in the container, and copy over all relevant data to that volume. To ensure paths are identical with those on the host, all data is then symlinked to the expected paths: for example, /cross/home/user/project becomes /home/user/project. The files will have the expected metadata as on the host.

By default, cross does not copy the cargo registry, not the target directory. These can be enabled via the CROSS_REMOTE_COPY_REGISTRY and CROSS_REMOTE_COPY_CACHE environment variables. In order to minimize the number of calls to docker, which has large overhead, when copying only subsets of a directory, we copy all files to a temporary directory for faster performance.

Since copying the entire toolchain remotely can take a long time, cross also supports persistent data volumes containing all data for the current toolchain. These can be created via:

cross-util volumes crate

cross will detect if a persistent data volume is present, and prefer it over a single-use volume. The persistent data volume will also contain the project files, and will reflect any changes to the local project by copying/removing changed files on every build.

Managing Data

Due to the addition of temporary files/directories, persistent data volumes, and containers that may not be cleaned up, we've added utilities to clean up data cross introduces:

# VOLUMES
# list all all persistent data volumes
$ cross-util volumes list
cross-stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-16b8c-fe5b13d68
# create a persistent data volume for the current toolchain
$ cross-util volumes create
# remove the persistent data volume for the current toolchain
$ cross-util volumes remove
# remove all persistent data volumes
$ cross-util volumes remove-all
# prune all data volumes not currently used with a container
# note that this affects more than just cross, and can
# be highly destructive
$ cross-util volumes prune

# CONTAINERS
# list all all hanging containers
$ cross-util containers list
# stop and remove all hanging containers
$ cross-util containers remove-all

Private Dependencies

Note that for private dependencies, you will need to copy over the cargo registry, since it uses the host toolchain, and might only support single-use volumes (this has not been extensively tested):

CROSS_REMOTE_COPY_REGISTRY=1 CROSS_REMOTE=1 cross build --target arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf

This is because the private dependencies are downloaded locally (to the host registry), and therefore must be updated remotely, which will not have access to SSH keys or other information inside the container.

Environment Variables

Remote build behavior can be further customized by environment variables provided to the build command.

  • CROSS_REMOTE: Inform cross it is using a remote container engine, and use data volumes rather than local bind mounts.
  • CROSS_REMOTE_COPY_REGISTRY: Copy the cargo registry and git directories. Is needed to support private SSH dependencies.
  • CROSS_REMOTE_COPY_CACHE: Copy all directories, even those containing CACHETAG.DIR (a cache directory tag).
  • CROSS_REMOTE_SKIP_BUILD_ARTIFACTS: Do not copy any generated build artifacts back to the host after finishing the build. If using persistent data volumes, the artifacts will remain in the volume.

For additional environment variables, refer to the environment variables documentation.