Module include_dir

An extension to the include_str!() and include_bytes!() macro for embedding an entire directory tree into your binary.

Environment Variables

You might want to read the Environment Variables section of The Cargo Book for a list of variables provided by cargo.

For example you might want to use the $CARGO_MANIFEST_DIR or $OUT_DIR variables. In specific to include a folder relative to your crate you might use include_dir!("$CARGO_MANIFEST_DIR/assets").

By default paths are assumed to be relative to the file where the macro is executed from.

Compile Time Considerations

While the include_dir!() macro executes relatively quickly, it expands to a fairly large amount of code (all your files are essentially embedded as Rust byte strings) and this may have a flow-on effect on the build process.

In particular, including a large number or files or files which are particularly big may cause the compiler to use large amounts of RAM or spend a long time parsing your crate.

As one data point, this crate’s target/ directory contained 620 files with a total of 64 MB, with a full build taking about 1.5 seconds and 200MB of RAM to generate a 7MB binary.

Using include_dir!("target/") increased the compile time to 5 seconds and used 730MB of RAM, generating a 72MB binary.

Macros

include_dir

Embed the contents of a directory in your crate.

Structs

Dir

A directory.

File

A file with its contents stored in a &'static [u8].

Metadata

Basic metadata for a file.

Enums

DirEntry

A directory entry, roughly analogous to std::fs::DirEntry.