Announcing cargo binstall 0.6

Cargo Binstall just got a brand new release, with QuickInstall support!

cargo binstall is a cargo extension to install tools you'd usually get via cargo install from compiled packages released by the project itself instead. You can add a bit of metadata to your Cargo.toml to point the tool to the right structure for your release files if the defaults don't fit it, and then your users can install your tool with:

$ cargo binstall crate-name

which will take seconds rather than minutes!

If you've already got cargo binstall, you can upgrade with cargo binstall cargo-binstall.

quickinstall is a third-party repository of compiled rust crates that's growing every day! It's an initiative by u/alsuren which uses Github Actions to build and Github Releases to host binaries for hundreds of crates which either don't provide their own builds, or don't provide builds in some architectures.

Cargo Binstall 0.6 supports quickinstall as a fallback when the wanted crate either doesn't have available builds or Binstall can't find them. Because quickinstall is a third-party repo, the tool will prompt you before downloading from it.

For example, the awesome jless tool, ready to go in less than 10 seconds:

$ cargo binstall jless
...
[WARN] The package will be downloaded from third-party source QuickInstall
[INFO] Do you wish to continue? yes/no
yes
[INFO] This will install the following binaries:                          
[INFO]   - jless (jless -> /home/.cargo/bin/jless-v0.7.1)                 
[INFO] And create (or update) the following symlinks:                     
[INFO]   - jless (/home/.cargo/bin/jless-v0.7.1 -> /home/.cargo/bin/jless)
[INFO] Do you wish to continue? yes/no
yes
[INFO] Installing binaries...
[INFO] Installation complete!

This new integration opens many more such crates to be installable from compiled package rather than source!