Rust library for inspecting .rlib binaries

Question

I'm looking for a way to load and inspect .rlib binaries generated by rustc. I've hunted around the standard library without much luck. My assumption is that an .rlib contains all the type information necessary to statically type check programs that "extern crate" it. rustc::metadata is where my hunt ended. I can't quite figure out if the structures available at this point in the compiler are intended as entry points for users, or if they are solely intermediate abstractions depending on a chain of previously initialized data.

Alternatively, If there's a way to dump an .rlib to stdout in a parsable form then that's also fantastic. I tried /usr/bin/nm, but it seemed to be excluding function type signatures. Maybe I'm missing something.

Anyways, I'm working on an editor utility for emacs that I hope at some point will provide contextually relevant information such as available methods, module items and their types, etc. I'd really appreciate any hints anyone has.

Answer 1

The .rlib file is an ar archive file. You can use readelf to read its content.

Try readelf -s <your_lib>.rlib. The type name may be mingled/decorated by the compiler so it may not be exactly the same as in .rs file.