Getting Started

Docker (quickest start — no installation needed)

Pull the pre-built image and run it against any Rust project:

docker run --rm --cpus=48 \
  -v $(pwd):/workspace/project \
  ghcr.io/yijunyu/cargo-slicer:latest

The image includes all binaries (cargo-slicer-rustc, cargo_warmup_pch, etc.) and a pre-warmed registry cache. --cpus=48 ensures the container uses all available cores. Replace 48 with the output of nproc on your machine. Verified on zeroclaw: 1.45× speedup (794 s → 547 s) vs plain cargo build --release.

First run: the container runs cargo-slicer pre-analyze automatically if no .slicer-cache/ directory is found, then builds with the full 3-layer pipeline.

Install

# Stable binary (source slicing + warmup CLI)
cargo install cargo-slicer

# Nightly driver (virtual slicer — the fast path)
cargo +nightly install cargo-slicer \
  --features rustc-driver \
  --bin cargo-slicer-rustc \
  --bin cargo_slicer_dispatch

If you are building from source:

git clone https://github.com/yijunyu/cargo-slicer
cd cargo-slicer

cargo install --path .
cargo +nightly install --path . --profile release-rustc \
  --features rustc-driver \
  --bin cargo-slicer-rustc \
  --bin cargo_slicer_dispatch

WSL on Windows drives (/mnt/c/, /mnt/d/): prefix every cargo install with SCCACHE_IDLE_TIMEOUT=0 to avoid NTFS permission errors. See Troubleshooting.

Quickstart: one command

Run the full pipeline against your project:

cd your-project
cargo-slicer.sh .

This runs four steps automatically:

  1. Warm the registry cache (cargo-warmup init --tier=1)
  2. Pre-analyze the workspace call graph
  3. Plan the critical compilation path
  4. Build with the three-layer RUSTC_WRAPPER chain

On the first run the warmup step takes ~10 minutes (it compiles the top-tier registry crates once). Every subsequent cold build is served from cache.

Manual setup (step by step)

If you prefer to control each step:

# Step 1: warm the registry cache (one-time, ~10 min)
cargo-warmup init --tier=1

# Step 2: pre-analyze the workspace (seconds)
cd your-project
cargo-slicer pre-analyze

# Step 3: build with virtual slicing
cargo clean
CARGO_SLICER_VIRTUAL=1 CARGO_SLICER_CODEGEN_FILTER=1 \
  RUSTC_WRAPPER=$(which cargo_slicer_dispatch) \
  cargo +nightly build --release

Important: never set RUSTC_WRAPPER when building cargo-slicer itself. Unset it before running cargo install --path ..