Bug: missing steps from installation instructions

[AndySchroder]

The following step is missing from the installation instructions to fetch build dependencies:

apt update
apt install -y cargo protobuf-compiler build-essential

Also, you must have protoc version 3.12.0 or later (https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases/tag/v3.12.0). This is needed for the --experimental_allow_proto3_optional option that is used. If using ubuntu, version 22.04 or later is required to have a new enough protobuf-compiler package to meet this requirement.

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Another issue I had was that cargo build makes an executable tied to certain versions of GLIBC. If the system you want to run on is an older system (such as ubuntu 20.04) that has an older version of GLIBC than you compile with, it won't work if it is too old. The fix for that is to run

RUSTFLAGS="-C target-feature=+crt-static" cargo build --release --target x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu

which makes a binary file that is truly statically linked and does not rely on GLIBC. The output goes in the subdirectory target/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/release. There are also some build files placed in the target/release subdirectory, but there is no final binary file. So, I'm not sure why there are extra build files placed there instead of everything being generated under target/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/release.

See also:

• https://msfjarvis.dev/posts/building-static-rust-binaries-for-linux/
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58526782/how-can-i-create-a-static-executable-with-rustc-using-glibc-instead-of-musl
  • This link also shows how to add everything to .cargo/config.toml so it doesn't need to be passed on the command line.