What is Crossbow?
The crossbow project aims to provide a complete toolkit for cross-platform game development in Rust - from project creation to publishing. In addition, the project simplifies the creation, packaging, and signing of Android and iOS applications. We want to make most of our tools - engine agnostic to help rust game developers integrate them into their engines or games.
Why Crossbow?
There are already cargo-apk, cargo-mobile, cargo-xcode, etc. - why do I need another packaging tool?
Project crossbow is not only a packaging tool for Android and iOS - it's cross-platform build tools, plugins, and toolkit for Rust! With crossbundle you can create native .apk/.aab without any Java or setup Gradle project with fancy Crossbow Android plugins (iOS in near future); with crossbundle-tools you can customize and create new commands; with crossbow-android you can write your own Android plugins in Java/Kotlin.
A lot of functionality was inspired by Godot, Xamarin, and cargo-apk.
Design Goals
- Customizable: Create new commands with available tools.
- Simple: Easy to install and start hacking but also pretty flexible for strong devs.
- Flexible: It's possible to build plain .apk/.aab or .app/.ipa; or with help of Gradle/XCode.
- Rust: Don't leave your Rust code - everything can be configured from
Cargo.toml. - Plugins: Godot-like plugins for Android (and iOS in future) with Rust wrapper!
Documentation
Now we would recommend you to read crossbow's documentation. Over there you will find how to set up development environment, install needed crates and how to use the tools.
Project structure
Crossbundle crates:
| Name | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|
| crossbundle | Command-line tool for building and running applications. | ✅ |
| crossbundle-tools | Toolkit used in crossbundle to build/pack/sign bundles. |
✅ |
Crossbow Platform crates:
| Name | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|
| crossbow-android | Crossbow Android Platform implementation. | 🆗 |
| crossbow-ios | Crossbow iOS Platform implementation. | 🛠 |
Crossbow Plugins:
| Name | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|
| admob-android | Google AdMob Plugin for Android. | 🆗 |
| play-games-services | Google Play Games Services Plugin for Android. | 🆗 |
| play-billing | Google Play Billing Plugin for Android. | 🆗 |
| play-core | Google Play Core Plugin for Android. | 📝 |
Helper crates:
| Name | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|
| android-tools-rs | Android-related tools for building and developing application. | ✅ |
| android-manifest-rs | AndroidManifest serializer and deserializer for Rust. | ✅ |
| apple-bundle-rs | AppleBundleResources serializer and deserializer for Rust. | ✅ |
✅ = Works and tested — 🆗 = Works but may contain bugs — 🛠 = Under development — 📝 = Planned
Special Thanks
Also, this project initially funded by Web3 Foundation Grants Program. Big shout-out to them!
License
Licensed under either of:
- Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
- MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)
at your option.
