Binary package: access submodules in examples

help
1

I have a binary project with several submodules and an example folder with some examples:

src
|__ mod_a/
| |__ mod.rs
|
|__ mod_b/
| |__ mod.rs
|
| __ examples/
| |__ ex1.rs
|
|__ main.rs

From the examples folder I cannot access to neither mod_a nor mod_b. I tried to use keywords like crate, extern crate to no avail.
I can guess this is only available for lib projects, is there any workararound for binary projects?

2

You have to properly integrate your examples folder into the module structure of your crate. I.e. add a examples/mod.rs file with:

mod ex1;

and in your main.rs file add:

mod examples;

Then you can import mod_a in examples/ex1.rs:

use crate::mod_a;

If you want examples like they are supported by Cargo, note that you need to put the examples folder at the top-level of your crate (above src/) (see here) and add a library to your package. The latter is as easy as adding a lib.rs file next to your main.rs, where you define the modules instead of in main.rs:

pub mod mod_a;
pub mod mod_b;

and change the imports in your main.rs to start with your crate name:

use your_crate::mod_a;

If you do that you can access the public items from your library in your examples/, like you'd do in main.rs (examples are compiled to binaries, just like main.rs).

1 Like