Building Octomind from Source (Rust)

Build Octomind from source in Rust and prepare the local checks used when contributing changes, including platform-specific builds. This guide is for contributors who need a development binary.

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.95+ (rustup.rs)
• Git
• C/C++ toolchain (for native dependencies)
  • Linux: build-essential / gcc
  • macOS: Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install)
• Protocol Buffers compiler (protoc), ripgrep, and ast-grep for the CI test environment.

Cargo.toml declares Rust 1.95 as the minimum; the checked-in CI test matrix uses 1.99.1, plus beta and nightly on Linux. Check your tools before building:

rustc --version
cargo --version
protoc --version
rg --version
ast-grep --version

For native test-library setup, see Common build problems.

Build

git clone https://github.com/muvon/octomind.git
cd octomind

# Debug build
cargo build

# Release build (optimized)
cargo build --release

# Binary location
./target/release/octomind --version

Code Style

Configure your editor from rustfmt.toml and .editorconfig. Formatting and whitespace hooks enforce part of this policy; the listed hooks do not validate copyright headers or every editor setting.

• Tabs, not spaces — rustfmt.toml sets hard_tabs = true.
• LF line endings, UTF-8, final newline, 120-column limit — defined in .editorconfig.
• Apache 2.0 copyright header — every new .rs file must begin with the standard Apache License header (see CONTRIBUTING.md for the exact block).

Running cargo fmt --all before committing handles formatting automatically. Keep unit test bodies in sibling *_tests.rs files as required by AGENTS.md.

Development Workflow

Use the flags declared in .pre-commit-config.yaml. The --all-targets --all-features flags make clippy and check cover tests, examples, and feature-gated code — without them you run a weaker check than the hooks.

# Check compilation (matches the hook)
cargo check --all-targets --all-features

# Run clippy (linting; warnings treated as errors)
cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings

# Format code (matches the fmt hook args)
cargo fmt --all

# Run tests
cargo test

# Run a specific test
cargo test directories::tests::test_config_file_path

Make targets

The Makefile wraps these commands and adds cross-platform build helpers. It also exports RUSTFLAGS=-C target-feature=+crt-static, so a Make build can differ from a direct Cargo build. The most useful targets for building from source:

make help
make quick
make fmt-check

Pre-commit Hooks

Pre-commit hooks enforce quality before each commit. Installation is required and per-clone: the hook is not committed to the repo, so .git/hooks/pre-commit does not exist until you install it. Hooks do not run out of the box after git clone.

# Install pre-commit (if not installed)
pip install pre-commit

# Install hooks (or: make pre-commit-install)
pre-commit install

Checks Performed

Manual Execution

# Run all hooks
make pre-commit

# Or directly
pre-commit run --all-files

Cross-Compilation

The Makefile defines seven build targets and requests static CRT linking using cross:

• x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, x86_64-unknown-linux-musl
• aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu, aarch64-unknown-linux-musl
• x86_64-pc-windows-gnu
• x86_64-apple-darwin, aarch64-apple-darwin (built natively on macOS hosts only)

# Install Rust targets, cross, and audit tooling
make setup

# Generate Cross.toml (cross-compilation config)
make cross-config

# Build everything (Linux + Windows + macOS-on-macOS)
make build-all

# Or build a single platform group
make build-linux
make build-windows
make build-macos      # macOS host only

# Package release archives into dist/
make dist

Linux and Windows targets build inside cross containers (Docker or Podman, set via CROSS_CONTAINER_ENGINE). macOS targets compile natively and require a macOS host.

Common build problems

Tests fail to link ONNX Runtime

The Linux x86-64 CI job downloads ONNX Runtime 1.24.2 and points ORT_LIB_LOCATION at its static library. To reproduce that setup in a Bash shell:

ort_workdir=$(mktemp -d)
ort_asset=onnxruntime-linux-x64-static_lib-1.24.2-glibc2_17
curl -fL "https://github.com/csukuangfj/onnxruntime-libs/releases/download/v1.24.2/${ort_asset}.zip" \
  -o "$ort_workdir/ort.zip"
unzip -q "$ort_workdir/ort.zip" -d "$ort_workdir"
export ORT_LIB_LOCATION="$ort_workdir/$ort_asset/lib"
cargo test --verbose

For Windows MSVC, CI uses dynamic CRT flags to match the downloaded ONNX libraries. Run the following from Bash with the MSVC toolchain; these are different from the Makefile's Windows GNU target:

RUSTFLAGS='-C target-feature=-crt-static' CXXFLAGS_x86_64_pc_windows_msvc=-MD cargo test --verbose

Embedding smoke tests can download model weights on first use. The CI workflow caches those weights separately from target/; see ci.yml for platform cache paths and exact setup.

Which binary or configuration am I using?

Use the explicit binary path to avoid an older installed release. OCTOMIND_DATA_DIR selects a separate data root, including config, sessions, and learning records:

./target/debug/octomind --version
OCTOMIND_DATA_DIR="$PWD/target/octomind-dev-data" ./target/debug/octomind config --show

Release Build Optimizations

The [profile.release] section in Cargo.toml applies to cargo build --release above:

• LTO enabled (link-time optimization)
• Single codegen unit (codegen-units = 1)
• opt-level = "s" (optimize for size while retaining vectorization)
• panic = "abort" (smaller binary)
• Symbol stripping (strip = true)
• overflow-checks = false (disabled in release)

Platform reference

• Linux: Landlock sandbox support (kernel 5.13+); enforcement depends on kernel support
• macOS: Seatbelt sandbox support
• Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%/octomind is the default data directory

These sandbox backends are selected when sandboxing is enabled, for example:

./target/debug/octomind run --sandbox

See also

• Architecture
• MCP Server Development
• Contributing
• Configuration Reference