rebar3_otter

A rebar3 plugin that builds Rust NIF crates written with otter-nif and installs the resulting shared library where erlang:load_nif/2 expects it. Write NIFs in Rust, then let this plugin drive cargo from your normal rebar3 build.

The plugin has no Rust dependency of its own — it treats the Rust toolchain as an external tool, the same way rebar3 treats the Erlang compiler.

Requirements

OTP 27 — the plugin uses OTP-27 doc syntax (-moduledoc/-doc).
cargo on PATH — toolchain installation is the user's responsibility.

(The NIF runtime floor is lower — NIF 2.17 / OTP 26 — but that governs loading the compiled library into a BEAM, not this build-time plugin.)

Install

Add the plugin to your rebar.config:

{plugins, [rebar3_otter]}.

Declare the crates to build:

{otter_crates, [
    #{name => "my_nif", path => "native/my_nif"}
]}.

Each entry in otter_crates is a map describing one crate:

Key	Required?	Type	Description
`name`	Required	`string() \| binary()`	Cargo crate name — must match `[package].name` in the crate's `Cargo.toml`.
`path`	Required	`string() \| binary()`	Crate directory, relative to the declaring app's directory.
`mode`	Optional	`release \| debug`	Cargo build profile. Defaults to `release`.
`features`	Optional	`[string() \| binary()]`	Cargo features to enable. Defaults to `[]`.
`target`	Optional	`string() \| binary() \| undefined`	Cross-compilation target triple; `undefined` builds for the host. Defaults to `undefined`.

String-typed values (name, path, target, and each features element) accept a string or a binary, normalized to a string. They mirror Cargo's own strings and carry hyphens (e.g. "x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu") naturally.

Then wire the providers as build hooks:

{provider_hooks, [
    {pre, [
        {compile, otter_compile},
        {clean,   otter_clean}
    ]}
]}.

otter_crates is read per application: path resolves relative to that app's directory and the built .so is installed into that app's priv/native/. In an umbrella project each app declares the crates it owns.

Scaffold a crate

rebar3 otter new --name my_nif

Generates native/my_nif/ with a minimal Cargo.toml (depending on otter-nif) and a src/lib.rs containing a hello NIF. The Erlang loader is intentionally not generated — NIF loading is two lines of standard Erlang you should write yourself:

-module(my_nif).
-on_load(init/0).

init() ->
    erlang:load_nif(filename:join(code:priv_dir(my_app), "native/my_nif"), 0).

%% Stub replaced at load time by the NIF implementation
hello() -> exit(nif_not_loaded).

Providers

Provider	Namespace	Role
`otter_compile`	`default`	`pre_compile` hook — runs `cargo build`, copies the `cdylib` into `priv/native/`.
`otter_clean`	`default`	`pre_clean` hook — removes the installed `.so` and the crate's `target/`.
`new`	`otter`	`rebar3 otter new --name <n>` — scaffolds a NIF crate.

cargo runs with ERTS_INCLUDE_DIR set to the running ERTS's include dir, so the native build can locate erl_nif.h without extra configuration.

See DESIGN.md for the full provider design, artifact-path resolution, and error handling.

License

Licensed under either of

Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

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