ci: Test with LLVM downloaded from Rust CI, test static linking

vadorovsky · vadorovsky · commit e4226dce0f6c · 2025-11-27T21:54:08.000+01:00
We are planning to use libLLVM from Rust CI to produce static binaries.
This change makes sure that tests work with Rust's libLLVM artifacts
and libLLVM linked statically (from any source).

Rust CI ships only one flavor of libLLVM, shared or static, per target.
Linux GNU targets come with shared ones. Apple and Linux musl targets
come with dynamic ones.

To save disk space, run `cargo hack --feature-powerset` only when
shared libraries are used. Otherwise, run cargo with a single feature
set.
diff --git a/.github/workflows/ci.yml b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
@@ -65,12 +65,32 @@ jobs:
             llvm: 21
             exclude-features: llvm-20,rust-llvm-20
         platform:
+          # Rust CI ships only one flavor of libLLVM, dynamic or static, per
+          # target. Linux GNU targets come with dynamic ones. Apple and Linux
+          # musl targets come with static ones.
           - os: macos-latest
+            static-target: aarch64-apple-darwin
+            # Rust does not provide a dynamic libLLVM library on macOS,
+            # therefore we exclude `default` and `rust-llvm-*`.
+            # macOS does not provide static libc++ and zlib and the ones
+            # provided by homebrew might be ABI-incompatible, therefore we
+            # exclude `llvm-deps-link-static`.
+            exclude-features: default,llvm-deps-link-static,rust-llvm-19,rust-llvm-20,rust-llvm-21
           - os: macos-15-intel
+            static-target: x86_64-apple-darwin
+            exclude-features: default,llvm-deps-link-static,rust-llvm-19,rust-llvm-20,rust-llvm-21
           - os: ubuntu-22.04
+            dynamic-target: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
+            static-target: x86_64-unknown-linux-musl
+            # Link dependencies like libc++, zlib, zstd statically on Linux.
+            llvm-features-static: llvm-deps-link-static
           - os: ubuntu-22.04-arm
+            dynamic-target: aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu
+            static-target: aarch64-unknown-linux-musl
+            llvm-features-static: llvm-deps-link-static
         llvm-from:
           - packages
+          - rust-ci
         include:
           # Currently we build LLVM from source only for Linux x86_64.
           - toolchain:
@@ -85,8 +105,15 @@ jobs:
 
     env:
       RUST_BACKTRACE: full
-      LLVM_FEATURES: llvm-${{ matrix.toolchain.llvm }}
-      LLVM_EXCLUDE_FEATURES: llvm-deps-link-static,llvm-link-static,no-llvm-linking
+      # Features that have to be included for dynamic linking.
+      LLVM_FEATURES_DYNAMIC: llvm-${{ matrix.toolchain.llvm }}
+      # Features that have to be included for static linking.
+      LLVM_FEATURES_STATIC: llvm-${{ matrix.toolchain.llvm }},llvm-link-static
+      # Features that have to be excluded when running `cargo hack --feature-powerset`
+      # and intending to link dynamically.
+      LLVM_EXCLUDE_FEATURES_DYNAMIC: llvm-deps-link-static,llvm-link-static,no-llvm-linking
+      RUSTC_LLVM_INSTALL_DIR_DYNAMIC: /tmp/rustc-llvm-dynamic
+      RUSTC_LLVM_INSTALL_DIR_STATIC: /tmp/rustc-llvm-static
 
     steps:
       - uses: actions/checkout@v6
@@ -118,16 +145,19 @@ jobs:
           set -euxo pipefail
           echo /usr/lib/llvm-15/bin >> $GITHUB_PATH
 
-      - name: Install LLVM (Linux, packages)
-        if: matrix.llvm-from == 'packages' && runner.os == 'Linux'
+      - name: Add LLVM APT repository
+        if: runner.os == 'Linux'
         run: |
           set -euxo pipefail
           wget -qO- https://apt.llvm.org/llvm-snapshot.gpg.key | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/apt.llvm.org.asc
           echo -e deb http://apt.llvm.org/jammy/ llvm-toolchain-jammy-${{ matrix.toolchain.llvm }} main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/llvm.list
-
           sudo apt update
-          sudo apt -y install llvm-${{ matrix.llvm-version }}-dev
-          echo /usr/lib/llvm-${{ matrix.llvm-version }}/bin >> $GITHUB_PATH
+
+      - name: Install LLVM (Linux, packages)
+        if: matrix.llvm-from == 'packages' && runner.os == 'Linux'
+        run: |
+          set -euxo pipefail
+          sudo apt -y install llvm-${{ matrix.toolchain.llvm }}-dev
           echo /usr/lib/llvm-${{ matrix.toolchain.llvm }}/bin >> $GITHUB_PATH
 
       - name: Install LLVM (macOS, packages)
@@ -138,7 +168,35 @@ jobs:
           echo $(brew --prefix llvm@${{ matrix.toolchain.llvm }})/bin >> $GITHUB_PATH
           echo "DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$(brew --prefix llvm@${{ matrix.toolchain.llvm }})/lib" >> $GITHUB_ENV
 
-      - name: Restore LLVM
+      - name: Install LLVM from Rust CI
+        if: matrix.llvm-from == 'rust-ci'
+        run: |
+          set -euxo pipefail
+          mkdir -p $RUSTC_LLVM_INSTALL_DIR
+          rustc_sha=$(cargo xtask rustc-llvm-commit --github-token "${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}")
+          download_llvm() {
+            local target=$1
+            local install_dir=$2
+            wget -q -O - "https://ci-artifacts.rust-lang.org/rustc-builds/$rustc_sha/rust-dev-nightly-$target.tar.xz" | \
+              tar -xJ --strip-components 2 -C $install_dir
+          }
+          if [[ -n "${{ matrix.platform['dynamic-target'] }}" ]]; then
+            download_llvm "${{ matrix.platform['dynamic-target'] }}"
+            echo "LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${RUSTC_LLVM_INSTALL_DIR_DYNAMIC}/lib" >> $GITHUB_ENV
+            # Add the dynamic libraries to `PATH` by default. All steps expected
+            # to link statically should overwrite `PATH` on their own.
+            echo "${RUSTC_LLVM_INSTALL_DIR_DYNAMIC}/bin" >> $GITHUB_PATH
+          fi
+          if [[ -n "${{ matrix.platform['static-target'] }}" ]]; then
+            download_llvm "${{ matrix.platform['static-target'] }}"
+            if [[ "${{ runner.os }}" == "Linux" ]]; then
+              # `FileCheck` binary shipped in musl tarballs is linked dynamically
+              # to musl, we can't execute it on Ubuntu.
+              rm -f "${RUSTC_LLVM_INSTALL_DIR_STATIC}/bin/FileCheck"
+            fi
+          fi
+
+      - name: Restore LLVM from GitHub Actions
         if: matrix.llvm-from == 'source'
         uses: actions/cache/restore@v4
         with:
@@ -165,17 +223,17 @@ jobs:
 
       - uses: taiki-e/install-action@cargo-hack
 
-      - name: Check
+      - name: Check (dynamic linking, feature powerset)
         run: |
-          cargo hack check --feature-powerset \
-            --exclude-features ${{ env.LLVM_EXCLUDE_FEATURES }},${{ matrix.toolchain.exclude-features }} \
-            --features ${{ env.LLVM_FEATURES }}
+          cargo hack check --feature-powerset --exclude-features \
+            ${{ env.LLVM_EXCLUDE_FEATURES_DYNAMIC }},${{ matrix.toolchain.exclude-features }},${{ matrix.platform.exclude-features }} \
+            --features ${{ env.LLVM_FEATURES_DYNAMIC }}
 
-      - name: Build
+      - name: Build (dynamic linking, feature powerset)
         run: |
-          cargo hack build --feature-powerset \
-            --exclude-features ${{ env.LLVM_EXCLUDE_FEATURES }},${{ matrix.toolchain.exclude-features }} \
-            --features ${{ env.LLVM_FEATURES }}
+          cargo hack build --feature-powerset --exclude-features \
+            ${{ env.LLVM_EXCLUDE_FEATURES_DYNAMIC }},${{ matrix.toolchain.exclude-features }},${{ matrix.platform.exclude-features }} \
+            --features ${{ env.LLVM_FEATURES_DYNAMIC }}
 
       # Toolchains provided by rustup include standard library artifacts
       # only for Tier 1 targets, which do not include BPF targets.
@@ -185,11 +243,12 @@ jobs:
       # running compiler tests.
       #
       # `RUSTC_BOOTSTRAP` is needed to use `rustc-build-sysroot` on stable Rust.
-      - name: Test (sysroot built on demand)
+      - name: Test (sysroot built on demand, dynamic linking)
         run: |
           RUSTC_BOOTSTRAP=1 cargo hack test --feature-powerset \
-            --exclude-features ${{ env.LLVM_EXCLUDE_FEATURES }},${{ matrix.toolchain.exclude-features }} \
-            --features ${{ env.LLVM_FEATURES }}
+            --exclude-features \
+            ${{ env.LLVM_EXCLUDE_FEATURES_DYNAMIC }},${{ matrix.toolchain.exclude-features }},${{ matrix.platform.exclude-features }} \
+            --features ${{ env.LLVM_FEATURES_DYNAMIC }}
 
       # To make things easier for package maintainers, the step of building a
       # custom sysroot can be skipped by setting the `BPFEL_SYSROOT_DIR`
@@ -200,7 +259,7 @@ jobs:
       #
       # `RUSTC_BOOTSTRAP` is needed to make `xtask build-std` work on stable
       # Rust.
-      - name: Test (prebuilt BPF standard library)
+      - name: Build BPF standard library
         run: |
           set -euxo pipefail
 
@@ -211,9 +270,12 @@ jobs:
             --sysroot-dir "$BPFEL_SYSROOT_DIR" \
             --target bpfel-unknown-none
 
-          BPFEL_SYSROOT_DIR="$BPFEL_SYSROOT_DIR" cargo hack test --feature-powerset \
-            --exclude-features ${{ env.LLVM_EXCLUDE_FEATURES }},${{ matrix.toolchain.exclude-features }} \
-            --features ${{ env.LLVM_FEATURES }}
+      - name: Test (prebuilt BPF standard libary, dynamic linking)
+        run: |
+          BPFEL_SYSROOT_DIR="${{ github.workspace }}/bpf-sysroot" \
+            cargo hack test --feature-powerset --exclude-features \
+            ${{ env.LLVM_EXCLUDE_FEATURES_DYNAMIC }},${{ matrix.toolchain.exclude-features }},${{ matrix.platform.exclude-features }} \
+            --features ${{ env.LLVM_FEATURES_DYNAMIC }}
 
       - uses: actions/checkout@v6
         if: runner.os == 'Linux' && matrix.toolchain.rust == 'nightly'
@@ -224,13 +286,53 @@ jobs:
 
       - name: Install
         if: runner.os == 'Linux' && matrix.toolchain.rust == 'nightly'
-        run: cargo install --path . --no-default-features --features ${{ env.LLVM_FEATURES }}
+        run: |
+          cargo install --path . --no-default-features --features \
+            ${{ env.LLVM_FEATURES_DYNAMIC }}
 
       - name: Run aya integration tests
         if: runner.os == 'Linux' && matrix.toolchain.rust == 'nightly'
         working-directory: aya
         run: cargo xtask integration-test local
 
+      - name: Prepare for static linking (macOS)
+        if: runner.os == 'macOS'
+        # macOS does not provide any static libraries. Homebrew does provide
+        # them, but in custom paths that the system-wide clang is not aware of.
+        # Point build.rs to them by setting environment variables.
+        run: |
+          echo "CXXSTDLIB_PATH=$(brew --prefix llvm@17)/lib/c++" >> $GITHUB_ENV
+          echo "ZLIB_PATH=$(brew --prefix zlib)/lib" >> $GITHUB_ENV
+
+      - name: Prepare for static linking (LLVM from Rust CI)
+        if: matrix.llvm-from == 'rust-ci'
+        run: |
+          echo "${RUSTC_LLVM_INSTALL_DIR_STATIC}/bin" >> $GITHUB_PATH
+
+      - name: Check (static linking, single feature set)
+        # Static linking in combination with `cargo hack --feature-powerset`
+        # (multiple builds) increases the disk usage massively. Therefore we
+        # perform all static builds with only one fixed feature set.
+        run: |
+          cargo check --no-default-features --features \
+            ${{ env.LLVM_FEATURES_STATIC }},${{ matrix.platform.llvm-features-static }}
+
+      - name: Build (static linking, single feature set)
+        run: |
+          cargo build --no-default-features --features \
+            ${{ env.LLVM_FEATURES_STATIC }},${{ matrix.platform.llvm-features-static }}
+
+      - name: Test (sysroot built on demand, static linking)
+        run: |
+          RUSTC_BOOTSTRAP=1 cargo test --no-default-features --features \
+            ${{ env.LLVM_FEATURES_STATIC }},${{ matrix.platform.llvm-features-static }}
+
+      - name: Test (prebuilt BPF standard library, static linking)
+        run: |
+          BPFEL_SYSROOT_DIR="${{ github.workspace }}/bpf-sysroot" \
+            cargo test --no-default-features --features \
+            ${{ env.LLVM_FEATURES_STATIC }},${{ matrix.platform.llvm-features-static }}
+
       - name: Report disk usage
         if: ${{ always() }}
         uses: ./.github/actions/report-disk-usage
