rust-lang/rust-bindgen

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

5270 stars · 828 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

bindgen is a Rust tool that automatically generates Rust FFI bindings to C (and some C++) libraries by parsing header files with libclang. It is available both as a CLI executable and as a library crate for build scripts.

Use cases

• generate Rust bindings for a C library
• call C functions from Rust
• wrap a C++ library for use in Rust
• convert C header files to Rust declarations
• set up FFI for a native dependency in a Cargo build

When to choose

• you need to call a C or C library from Rust without hand-writing extern declarations
• you want bindings kept in sync with upstream C headers
• you are building a -sys crate for a native library

When to avoid

• the C++ library uses complex templates or advanced features bindgen cannot translate
• you need bindings for languages other than C/C++
• you want a hand-tuned, idiomatic safe Rust API rather than raw FFI declarations

Facets

cli-tool · maturity active

parser developer-tools cli developer-tools programming-languages parsers rust cross-platform cli ffi bindings c-interop cpp-interop libclang rust codegen

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