Downloading crates

A tool called gnrt knows how to download crates and how to generate BUILD.gn rules.

To start, download the crate you want like this:

cd chromium/src
vpython3 tools/crates/run_gnrt.py -- vendor

Although the gnrt tool is part of the Chromium source code, by running this command you will be downloading and running its dependencies from crates.io. See the earlier section discussing this security decision.

This vendor command may download:

• Your crate
• Direct and transitive dependencies
• New versions of other crates, as required by cargo to resolve the complete set of crates required by Chromium.

Chromium maintains patches for some crates, kept in //third_party/rust/chromium_crates_io/patches. These will be reapplied automatically, but if patching fails you may need to take manual action.