Publishing

⚠️ Before publishing, you should consider removing insecure metadata. For example, images might have EXIF location data in them.

Freya produces a self-contained executable in target/release, so you can technically distribute that. However, you might want to create an installer instead. You can use executable packagers of your choice, but for a more automated and "Rusty" version, you can use cargo-packager, which is basically an abstraction over executable packagers, which you would have to set up yourself.

There is an example you can check out.

`cargo-packager` installation

Run:

cargo install cargo-packager --locked

Usage

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[package.metadata.packager]
before-packaging-command = "cargo build --release" # Before packaging, packager will run this command.
product-name = "My App" # By default, the crate name will be shown, but you probably prefer "My App" over "my-app".

And run:

cargo packager --release

And there you go! You should now have an installer in target/release for your current OS. To publish your app on a different OS, see the next section, Configuration.

Configuration

We used a very bare-bones example, so make sure to check out all configuration options in the Config struct in the cargo-packager API docs. Note that underscores should be hyphens when you use TOML.

One crucial configuration field is formats. This is a list of installers that cargo-packager should generate, and by default, it's your current OS. You can have a look at the list on GitHub, or on the API docs.

Changing the executable icon on Windows

cargo-packager will change the icon for platforms other than Windows using the icons field, but it does not do it on Windows (yet?).

Anyway, the cargo-packager team recommends using winresource (as opposed to winres which is not maintained). Before using it, make sure that you have the requirements that are listed on its page.

Add it to your build dependencies in Cargo.toml:

[build-dependencies]
winresource = "0.1.7"

And add this to your build.rs file (make sure you link it in your Cargo.toml):

// Change this to your icon's location
const ICON: &str = "assets/icons/icon.ico";

fn main() {
    if std::env::var("CARGO_CFG_TARGET_OS").unwrap() == "windows" {
        let mut res = winresource::WindowsResource::new();
        res.set_icon(ICON);
        res.compile().unwrap();
    }
}

To convert more common formats like .png or .jpg to an .ico, you can use imagemagick. Once installed, run magick convert your_icon.png icon.ico.

Optimizing

The "Optimizing" chapter in the Dioxus docs applies in Freya too. Note that WebAssembly-related tips are irrelevant.

Freya Book