CARGO-PUBLISH(1)

📦 version 1.84.1, in ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble

🎀 cargo-publish — General Commands Manual 🎀

okay bestie, pull up a chair, because this is the page where your little baby crate leaves the nest and goes out into the world 💖 This is CARGO-PUBLISH(1), from the General Commands Manual section, and it's all about yeeting your package onto a registry. Let's go ✨

NAME

cargo-publish — Upload a package to the registry 👑

SYNOPSIS

cargo publish [options]

DESCRIPTION

So here's the vibe 🌸 — this command builds you a distributable, compressed .crate file stuffed with the source code of the package sitting in your current directory, and then uploads it to a registry. The default registry is <https://crates.io> (the main character, obviously 👑). Here's the whole sequence, step by step:

  1. It does a few lil checks first, including:
    • It checks the package.publish key in the manifest to see if there are any restrictions on which registries you're even allowed to publish to 🚫
  2. It creates a .crate file by following the exact steps in cargo-package(1) 📦
  3. It uploads the crate to the registry. Then the server runs its own extra checks on the crate. Not your problem, but know it's happening 💅
  4. The client then polls, waiting for the package to show up in the index — and it may timeout 😭. If that happens, you gotta check for completion manually yourself. Important tho: this timeout does not affect the upload. The upload already happened, bestie, breathe 🫶

Also, this command requires you to be authenticated — either with the --token option or by using cargo-login(1) 🔐

Want the full lore? See the reference at <https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/publishing.html> for more details about packaging and publishing 📚

OPTIONS

Publish Options ✨

  • --dry-run — Runs every single check but does NOT upload. Perfect for the "am I about to embarrass myself" rehearsal 🎭
  • --token token — The API token to use when authenticating. This overrides the token stored in the credentials file (which, btw, is created by cargo-login(1)).
    • Cargo config environment variables (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html>) can be used to override the tokens stored in the credentials file. The token for crates.io may be specified with the CARGO_REGISTRY_TOKEN environment variable. Tokens for other registries may be specified with environment variables of the form CARGO_REGISTRIES_NAME_TOKEN where NAME is the name of the registry in all capital letters.
  • --no-verify — Don't verify the contents by building them. Skipping the vibe check, bold move 💀
  • --allow-dirty — Allows working directories with uncommitted VCS changes to be packaged. Yes, your chaotic uncommitted mess is welcome here 🙈
  • --index index — The URL of the registry index to use 🔗
  • --registry registry — Name of the registry to publish to. Registry names are defined in Cargo config files (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html>). If you don't specify it, and there's a package.publish field in Cargo.toml (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/manifest.html#the-publish-field>) with a single registry, then it publishes to that registry. Otherwise it uses the default registry, which is defined by the registry.default config key (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html#registrydefault>) — and that one defaults to crates-io 👑

Package Selection 🦋

By default, when you give no package selection options at all, which packages get selected depends on the selected manifest file (which is based on the current working directory if --manifest-path isn't given). If the manifest is the root of a workspace, then the workspace's default members get selected. Otherwise, only the package defined by the manifest gets selected. Simple as that 💅

You can set a workspace's default members explicitly with the workspace.default-members key in the root manifest. If that key isn't set, then a virtual workspace will include all workspace members (which is the same as passing --workspace), and a non-virtual workspace will include only the root crate itself.

🚨 Selecting more than one package is unstable and available only on the nightly channel (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/appendix-07-nightly-rust.html>), and it requires the -Z package-workspace flag to enable. See <https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/10948> for more information. iykyk 😭
  • -p *spec*…, --package *spec*… — Publish only the specified packages. See cargo-pkgid(1) for the SPEC format. This flag may be specified multiple times and supports common Unix glob patterns like *, ? and []. However, to avoid your shell accidentally expanding glob patterns before Cargo handles them, you must use single quotes or double quotes around each pattern. (Yes, the quotes are load-bearing, bestie 🫶)
  • --workspace — Publish all members in the workspace. All of them. Every single one 🌈
  • --exclude *SPEC*… — Exclude the specified packages. Must be used in conjunction with the --workspace flag. This flag may be specified multiple times and supports common Unix glob patterns like *, ? and []. But again — to avoid your shell accidentally expanding glob patterns before Cargo handles them, you must use single quotes or double quotes around each pattern ✨

Compilation Options 🔥

  • --target triple — Publish for the given architecture. The default is the host architecture. The general format of the triple is <arch><sub>-<vendor>-<sys>-<abi>. Run rustc --print target-list for a list of supported targets. This flag may be specified multiple times.
  • --target-dir directory — Directory for all generated artifacts and intermediate files. May also be specified with the CARGO_TARGET_DIR environment variable, or the build.target-dir config value (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html>). Defaults to target in the root of the workspace 📁

Feature Selection 🌸

These feature flags let you control which features get enabled. When no feature options are given, the default feature is activated for every selected package.

See the features documentation (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/features.html#command-line-feature-options>) for more details 👑

  • -F features, --features features — Space or comma separated list of features to activate. Features of workspace members may be enabled with package-name/feature-name syntax. This flag may be specified multiple times, which enables all specified features ✨
  • --all-features — Activate all available features of all selected packages. Go big or go home 💅
  • --no-default-features — Do not activate the default feature of the selected packages. Not me turning off the defaults 😌

Manifest Options 💜

  • --manifest-path path — Path to the Cargo.toml file. By default, Cargo searches for the Cargo.toml file in the current directory or any parent directory 🔍
  • --locked — Asserts that the exact same dependencies and versions are used as when the existing Cargo.lock file was originally generated. Cargo will exit with an error when either of the following scenarios arises:
    • The lock file is missing.
    • Cargo attempted to change the lock file due to a different dependency resolution.
    • It may be used in environments where deterministic builds are desired, such as in CI pipelines 🤖
  • --offline — Prevents Cargo from accessing the network for any reason. Without this flag, Cargo will stop with an error if it needs to access the network and the network isn't available. With this flag, Cargo will attempt to proceed without the network if possible.
    • ⚠️ Beware that this may result in a different dependency resolution than online mode. Cargo will restrict itself to crates that are downloaded locally, even if there might be a newer version as indicated in the local copy of the index. See the cargo-fetch(1) command to download dependencies before going offline.
    • May also be specified with the net.offline config value (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html>).
  • --frozen — Equivalent to specifying both --locked and --offline. Two for the price of one 🧊
  • --lockfile-path PATH — Changes the path of the lockfile from the default (<workspace_root>/Cargo.lock) to PATH. PATH must end with Cargo.lock (e.g. --lockfile-path /tmp/temporary-lockfile/Cargo.lock). Note that providing --lockfile-path will ignore the existing lockfile at the default path, and instead will either use the lockfile from PATH, or write a new lockfile into the provided PATH if it doesn't exist. This flag can be used to run most commands in read-only directories, writing the lockfile into the provided PATH ✨

Miscellaneous Options 🍓

  • -j N, --jobs N — Number of parallel jobs to run. May also be specified with the build.jobs config value (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html>). Defaults to the number of logical CPUs. If negative, it sets the maximum number of parallel jobs to the number of logical CPUs plus the provided value. If a string default is provided, it sets the value back to defaults. Should not be 0. Seriously. Not 0 💀
  • --keep-going — Build as many crates in the dependency graph as possible, rather than aborting the build on the first one that fails to build.
    • For example, if the current package depends on dependencies fails and works, one of which fails to build, cargo publish -j1 may or may not build the one that succeeds (depending on which one of the two builds Cargo picked to run first), whereas cargo publish -j1 --keep-going would definitely run both builds, even if the one run first fails 🫶

(part 1 done bestie — more coming, don't go anywhere 💖)

✨ Display Options ✨

  • -v, --verbose — Use verbose output. May be specified twice for “very verbose” output which includes extra output such as dependency warnings and build script output. May also be specified with the term.verbose config value (https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html). 💬
  • -q, --quiet — Do not print cargo log messages. May also be specified with the term.quiet config value (https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html). 🤫
  • --color when — Control when colored output is used. Valid values:
    • auto (default): Automatically detect if color support is available on the terminal. 🌈
    • always: Always display colors. 🎨
    • never: Never display colors. 🚫

May also be specified with the term.color config value (https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html). 🎀

🎀 Common Options 🎀

  • +toolchain — If Cargo has been installed with rustup, and the first argument to cargo begins with +, it will be interpreted as a rustup toolchain name (such as +stable or +nightly). See the rustup documentation (https://rust-lang.github.io/rustup/overrides.html) for more information about how toolchain overrides work. 🛠️
  • --config KEY=VALUE or PATH — Overrides a Cargo configuration value. The argument should be in TOML syntax of KEY=VALUE, or provided as a path to an extra configuration file. This flag may be specified multiple times. See the command-line overrides section (https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html#command-line-overrides) for more information. ⚙️
  • -C PATH — Changes the current working directory before executing any specified operations. This affects things like where cargo looks by default for the project manifest (Cargo.toml), as well as the directories searched for discovering .cargo/config.toml, for example. This option must appear before the command name, for example cargo -C path/to/my-project build. 📂
Heads up, bestie! This option is only available on the nightly channel (https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/appendix-07-nightly-rust.html) and requires the -Z unstable-options flag to enable (see #10098 https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/10098). 🌙
  • -h, --help — Prints help information. 🆘
  • -Z flag — Unstable (nightly-only) flags to Cargo. Run cargo -Z help for details. 🧪

🌍 ENVIRONMENT 🌍

See the reference (https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/environment-variables.html) for details on environment variables that Cargo reads. 🌱

💀 EXIT STATUS 💀

  • 0: Cargo succeeded. ✅
  • 101: Cargo failed to complete. ❌

🌸 EXAMPLES 🌸

  1. Publish the current package:
cargo publish

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

cargo(1), cargo-package(1), cargo-login(1)

And that's a wrap on CARGO-PUBLISH(1), bestie! 💖 Source: Cargo manual. Version/date: not specified here, but you know the vibe. Periodt. 💅

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