public_items 0.0.3

List public items (public API) of library crates. Enables diffing public API between releases.
Documentation

public_items

List public items (the public API) of a Rust library crate by analyzing the rustdoc JSON of the crate.

Usage

# Install the tool that comes with this package
cargo install public_items

# Generate rustdoc JSON for your Rust library
RUSTDOCFLAGS='-Z unstable-options --output-format json' cargo +nightly doc --lib --no-deps

# List all items in the public API of the Rust library using the tool
public-items ./target/doc/your_library.json

Example

Using the tool on its own library:

% RUSTDOCFLAGS='-Z unstable-options --output-format json' cargo +nightly doc --lib --no-deps
% public-items ./target/doc/public_items.json
public_items
public_items::Error
public_items::Error::SerdeJsonError
public_items::Error::fmt
public_items::Error::from
public_items::Error::source
public_items::Result
public_items::from_rustdoc_json_str

Tip: By writing the public API to a file for two different versions of your library, you can diff your public API across versions.

Target audience

Maintainers of Rust libraries that want to keep track of changes to their public API.

Limitations

Currently:

  • The type of items are not shown. So a struct field and and struct method is listed as Struct::field and Struct::method. And tuple structs will just be represented with Struct::0, Struct::1, etc. Since Rust does not support method overloading, this is not that big of an issue in practice.