6 ms·

Show HN: Fleet – Experimental build tool for Rust that’s up to 5x faster

63 points by VarunPotti 4y ago

Fleet is an experimental fast, lightweight, open-source, build tool for Rust. Builds with Fleet enabled are up-to 5x faster! For a production repository (infinyon/fluvio) which we tested, we were able to cut down our incremental build times from 29 seconds down to 9 seconds, boosted by Fleet. We saw even better results on dimensionhq/volt, with our build times cut down from 3 minutes to just 1 minute - a 3x speed improvement! How does fleet work? Fleet works by optimizing your builds using existing tooling available in the Rust ecosystem, including seamlessly integrating sccache, lld, zld, ramdisks (for those using WSL or HDD's) et al. You can get fleet at the official website. Check out fleet over at https://github.com/dimensionhq/fleet and our website at https://fleet.rs Looking forward to your feedback and thoughts!

blarg1 4y ago
I installed it via the cargo install method, do I have to do anything else like modify cargo config files?
- blarg1 4y ago
  Ah nvm, looked up the docs :) https://fleet.rs/docs/commands/build https://fleet.rs/docs/commands/build
boredstealth 4y ago
amazing! sounds very intresting
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lewantmontreal 4y ago
Nice, faster rust builds are always welcome. I wonder if in the future some service might even offer prebuilt crates for the various architectures. I think that idea was brought up at some point.
- thejosh 4y ago
  In Elixir, when performance is needed and it's appropriate, we can use Rustler [0], however it's a PITA to ask developers to install rust, and you need it on CI etc to build the binaries. A recent solution was to precompile these binaries. It's great. [0] https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler [1] https://dashbit.co/blog/rustler-precompiled https://dashbit.co/blog/rustler-precompiled
firstSpeaker 4y ago
Not to be confused with https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/ https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/
- elssar 4y ago
  Or with https://fleetdm.com https://fleetdm.com
  - ghostpepper 4y ago
    Or https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/fleet/current/fleet-server.html https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/fleet/current/fleet-server.h...
    - 2bitencryption 4y ago
      Or https://www.fleetlabs.com/constipation-relief-products/enemas/fleet-saline-enema https://www.fleetlabs.com/constipation-relief-products/enema...
vladvasiliu 4y ago
The site and repo readme are quite light on details on how this works. Does it do anything else besides using sccache and lld/zld? I'd expect so, since these tools don't require rust nightly, whereas fleet does. --- Edit: After a quick look over the code, it also sets codegen units to 256, but doesn't seem to do anything else. I see the same improvements adding manually sccache and mold to ~/.cargo/config.toml when building volt, without touching the repo's Cargo.toml. standard rust config: 1m20s sccache + mold: 30s I ran the tests with Rust 1.60.0, on Linux, on an AMD 5850U (6 core, mobile).
- pedrocr 4y ago
  The 5850U is the 8 core part. Maybe you mean 5650U?
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    You're correct, it was a typo.
- XtremeDevX 4y ago
  It also uses ramdisk on WSL or for those who use hard-drives for builds. Also great question about using nightly, we're using a shared-generics flag that requires nightly (and speeds up build times). We're working on making this more configurable to enable / disable what features you want.
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    > It also uses ramdisk on WSL or for those who use hard-drives for builds. Yeah, I skipped over this, considering that most people doing rust dev will likely have some kind of SSD. I didn't look into how you went about doing this, but one thing that I'd like is to be able to move the target/ directory on a ram disk, or, generally, out of the source root [0]. If Fleet were able to do this transparently, it would be really great. --- [0] I know it's possible to define an external directory, but it applies to all projects, and it's not what I want, because shared crates would go overwrite each other.
paulgb 4y ago
I’m excited to see this! Given that sccache integrates with cloud storage, this looks fairly straightforward to integrate in a CI/CD workflow, did I get that right?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- VarunPotti 4y ago
  Yep, we also made sure that we include examples so that you can easily use this with github workflows, it configures & caches all the installed apps so that you would get really fast builds . https://fleet.rs/docs/ci/linux https://fleet.rs/docs/ci/linux
qeternity 4y ago
> For a production repository (infinyon/fluvio) which we tested, we were able to cut down our incremental build times from 29 seconds down to 9 seconds, boosted by Fleet. We saw even better results on dimensionhq/volt, with our build times cut down from 3 minutes to just 1 minute - a 3x speed improvement! Not sure your maths are correct here.
the__alchemist 4y ago
Top line: > Fleet is the blazing fast build tool My primate pattern-matching brain says this is functionality-poor compared to its alternatives, or the alternatives it compares to are poor examples.
johnwoods 4y ago
As noted by another HN user, it's clear that this doesn't do anything interesting on Linux. Also, higher codegen units will produce slower code at times. Overall, on Linux I do not notice any significant improvement in build times (we already use sccache)

63 points by VarunPotti 4y ago

blarg1 4y ago

I installed it via the cargo install method, do I have to do anything else like modify cargo config files?

blarg1 4y ago
Ah nvm, looked up the docs :) https://fleet.rs/docs/commands/build https://fleet.rs/docs/commands/build

boredstealth 4y ago

amazing! sounds very intresting

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

lewantmontreal 4y ago

Nice, faster rust builds are always welcome. I wonder if in the future some service might even offer prebuilt crates for the various architectures. I think that idea was brought up at some point.

thejosh 4y ago
In Elixir, when performance is needed and it's appropriate, we can use Rustler [0], however it's a PITA to ask developers to install rust, and you need it on CI etc to build the binaries. A recent solution was to precompile these binaries. It's great. [0] https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler [1] https://dashbit.co/blog/rustler-precompiled https://dashbit.co/blog/rustler-precompiled

firstSpeaker 4y ago

Not to be confused with https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/ https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/

elssar 4y ago
Or with https://fleetdm.com https://fleetdm.com
- ghostpepper 4y ago
  Or https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/fleet/current/fleet-server.html https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/fleet/current/fleet-server.h...
  - 2bitencryption 4y ago
    Or https://www.fleetlabs.com/constipation-relief-products/enemas/fleet-saline-enema https://www.fleetlabs.com/constipation-relief-products/enema...

vladvasiliu 4y ago

The site and repo readme are quite light on details on how this works. Does it do anything else besides using sccache and lld/zld? I'd expect so, since these tools don't require rust nightly, whereas fleet does. --- Edit: After a quick look over the code, it also sets codegen units to 256, but doesn't seem to do anything else. I see the same improvements adding manually sccache and mold to ~/.cargo/config.toml when building volt, without touching the repo's Cargo.toml. standard rust config: 1m20s sccache + mold: 30s I ran the tests with Rust 1.60.0, on Linux, on an AMD 5850U (6 core, mobile).

pedrocr 4y ago
The 5850U is the 8 core part. Maybe you mean 5650U?
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  You're correct, it was a typo.
XtremeDevX 4y ago
It also uses ramdisk on WSL or for those who use hard-drives for builds. Also great question about using nightly, we're using a shared-generics flag that requires nightly (and speeds up build times). We're working on making this more configurable to enable / disable what features you want.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  > It also uses ramdisk on WSL or for those who use hard-drives for builds. Yeah, I skipped over this, considering that most people doing rust dev will likely have some kind of SSD. I didn't look into how you went about doing this, but one thing that I'd like is to be able to move the target/ directory on a ram disk, or, generally, out of the source root [0]. If Fleet were able to do this transparently, it would be really great. --- [0] I know it's possible to define an external directory, but it applies to all projects, and it's not what I want, because shared crates would go overwrite each other.

paulgb 4y ago

I’m excited to see this! Given that sccache integrates with cloud storage, this looks fairly straightforward to integrate in a CI/CD workflow, did I get that right?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
VarunPotti 4y ago
Yep, we also made sure that we include examples so that you can easily use this with github workflows, it configures & caches all the installed apps so that you would get really fast builds . https://fleet.rs/docs/ci/linux https://fleet.rs/docs/ci/linux

qeternity 4y ago

> For a production repository (infinyon/fluvio) which we tested, we were able to cut down our incremental build times from 29 seconds down to 9 seconds, boosted by Fleet. We saw even better results on dimensionhq/volt, with our build times cut down from 3 minutes to just 1 minute - a 3x speed improvement! Not sure your maths are correct here.

the__alchemist 4y ago

Top line: > Fleet is the blazing fast build tool My primate pattern-matching brain says this is functionality-poor compared to its alternatives, or the alternatives it compares to are poor examples.

johnwoods 4y ago

As noted by another HN user, it's clear that this doesn't do anything interesting on Linux. Also, higher codegen units will produce slower code at times. Overall, on Linux I do not notice any significant improvement in build times (we already use sccache)