mozilla/cbindgen

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

2945 stars · 386 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

cbindgen is a tool that generates C and C++11 header files from Rust crates that expose a public C API. It can be used as a standalone CLI program or embedded as a Rust library in build scripts, and its output reflects Rust's actual type layout and ABI guarantees.

Use cases

• generate C headers from a Rust library
• create C++ bindings for Rust code for FFI
• automate header generation in a build.rs build script
• expose a Rust crate to C or C++ consumers
• keep C header files in sync with Rust source code

When to choose

• you maintain a Rust library with a cdylib or staticlib C API and need matching headers
• you want machine-generated headers that reflect Rust's ABI guarantees instead of hand-written ones
• you need both C and C++11 headers emitted from the same crate
• you want header generation integrated into your build process

When to avoid

• you need bindings for languages other than C or C++ (consider alternatives like uniffi or PyO3)
• your Rust crate does not expose a public C API
• you need guaranteed support for an unusual edge case, since feature development is ad hoc and gaps may require filing issues or contributing patches

Facets

cli-tool · maturity active

compiler developer-tools parser developer-tools programming-languages cross-platform rust cpp c cli cross-platform ffi bindings code-generation c-headers rust-interop

Member repositories

For agents

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