The Rustc Driver and Interface

The rustc_driver is essentially rustc's main() function. It acts as the glue for running the various phases of the compiler in the correct order, using the interface defined in the rustc_interface crate.

The rustc_interface crate provides external users with an (unstable) API for running code at particular times during the compilation process, allowing third parties to effectively use rustc's internals as a library for analysing a crate or emulating the compiler in-process (e.g. the RLS or rustdoc).

For those using rustc as a library, the rustc_interface::run_compiler() function is the main entrypoint to the compiler. It takes a configuration for the compiler and a closure that takes a Compiler. run_compiler creates a Compiler from the configuration and passes it to the closure. Inside the closure, you can use the Compiler to drive queries to compile a crate and get the results. This is what the rustc_driver does too. You can see a minimal example of how to use rustc_interface here.

You can see what queries are currently available through the rustdocs for Compiler. You can see an example of how to use them by looking at the rustc_driver implementation, specifically the rustc_driver::run_compiler function (not to be confused with rustc_interface::run_compiler). The rustc_driver::run_compiler function takes a bunch of command-line args and some other configurations and drives the compilation to completion.

rustc_driver::run_compiler also takes a Callbacks, a trait that allows for custom compiler configuration, as well as allowing some custom code run after different phases of the compilation.

Warning: By its very nature, the internal compiler APIs are always going to be unstable. That said, we do try not to break things unnecessarily.