If you're embedding, say, a C library inside of Rust, you can do so via a so-called "build.rs" script [1]. These run at build time so you can do pretty much wha

If you're embedding, say, a C library inside of Rust, you can do so via a so-called "build.rs" script [1]. These run at build time so you can do pretty much whatever you want. They're not necessarily pretty, but given that Cargo isn't going to support other languages natively, it's often a less-evil option. Then there are build systems that natively support Rust in addition to other languages and know how to plug them together [2] [3] [4]. If you're already using one of these existing tools, then you don't need to roll your own, you can plug it into your existing project. Of course if you really are using Makefiles in C you're already living in the wild west, so it's on you to figure out how to add Rust to your projects in that case (or switch to a better build system). [1]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/build-scripts.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/build-scripts.html [2]: https://bazelbuild.github.io/rules_rust/ https://bazelbuild.github.io/rules_rust/ [3]: https://buck.build/rule/rust_library.html https://buck.build/rule/rust_library.html [4]: https://mesonbuild.com/Rust.html https://mesonbuild.com/Rust.html