gmod-rs/examples/my-first-binary-module/README.md

Installing Rust

Installing Rust is as easy as downloading rustup and running it!

Building the example

To build the example in debug mode, you'll need to specify the target architecture for your build.

Platform	Command	Description
win32	cargo build --target i686-pc-windows-msvc	Windows 32-bit Use this if your server is running Windows and is on the main branch of Garry's Mod (this is the default branch.)
win64	cargo build --target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc	Windows 64-bit Use this if your server is running Windows and is on the x86-64 branch of Garry's Mod.
linux	cargo build --target i686-unknown-linux-gnu	Linux 32-bit Use this if your server is running Linux and is on the main branch of Garry's Mod (this is the default branch.)
linux64	cargo build --target x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu	Linux 64-bit Use this if your server is running Linux and is on the x86-64 branch of Garry's Mod.

You can find the compiled binary in target/<TARGET>/debug/my_first_binary_module.dll on Windows or target/<TARGET>/debug/libmy_first_binary_module.so on Linux.

If Rust complains it can't find the target/toolchain, you'll need to install it. By default Rust only installs your system's native toolchain, which is most likely Windows 64-bit (x86_64-pc-windows-msvc)

I don't recommend cross-compiling Linux binaries on Windows. If you want to compile Linux binaries on Windows, do it in WSL.

Using the example in Garry's Mod

First, rename the compiled binary to gmsv_my_first_binary_module_PLATFORM.dll where PLATFORM is one of the following:

Platform	Description
win32	Windows 32-bit Use this if your server is running Windows and is on the main branch of Garry's Mod (this is the default branch.)
win64	Windows 64-bit Use this if your server is running Windows and is on the x86-64 branch of Garry's Mod.
linux	Linux 32-bit Use this if your server is running Linux and is on the main branch of Garry's Mod (this is the default branch.)
linux64	Linux 64-bit Use this if your server is running Linux and is on the x86-64 branch of Garry's Mod.

Then, move the compiled binary to garrysmod/lua/bin/ on your server. If the bin folder doesn't exist, create it.

Finally, you can load the module from Lua!

require("my_first_binary_module")

Preparing your module for release

If you've written a useful module and want to release it to the world, or just on your server, build with the --release flag:

cargo build --target <TARGET> --release

This enables performance optimization of the compiled binary and removes debug symbols which make the binary huge, whilst taking longer to compile.

On Linux, you'll want to run the strip command on the compiled binary to remove debug symbols.