Directory structure for crates

[sunfishcode]

Currently Cranelift uses a cargo workspace structure in which there's a top-level crate, and then subcrates under a lib directory with shortened names:

lib/wasm/ - the cranelift-wasm crate
lib/codegen/ - the cranelift-codegen crate
etc.

I've not seen any other Rust projects organized in this way. What I have seen is that projects create directories under the top level with the full name of their crates. For Cranelift, that would look something like this:

cranelift-wasm/
cranelift-codegen/
etc.

Has anyone found the /lib/foo structure to be confusing? Would the full crate name approach be easier to understand?

[arthmis]

I probably wouldn't have found those crates if I didn't read this issue. I feel like the way rustc is organized is at least easier to discover all the parts of the overall crate.

[bnjbvr]

It has bugged me in the past because this introduces unnecessary depth when looking up files in IDEs, which is only a very minor annoyance to me.

Since many of these crates are published on crates.io and could be used on their own, it'd be nice to have them at the top-level directory for discoverability. So I'm in.

I would even be fine with not having the cranelift- prefix for each of them, but maybe this will get confusing with other directories that are not crates? Would just be a nice-to-have.

[sunfishcode]

Ok, it sounds like it'd be good to do this. My guess is we should include the cranelift- prefixes, to separate the from the non-crate directories. Is anyone interested in working on this? 😃

[arthmis]

I'm willing. What would I have to do?

[sunfishcode]

You'd have to rename the directories, update the paths in the top-level Cargo.toml, as well as changing paths like "../codegen" to "../cranelift-codegen" in the subdirectory Cargo.toml files. And then search for "lib/" in the rest of the tree and update accordingly. And then make sure everything still builds :-).

[arthmis]

Okay sounds good

[bnjbvr]

Thanks @LazyPassion, closing.