Building From Source

In addition to meeting the system requirements, there are three things you need to build Routinator: rsync, a C toolchain and Rust. You can run Routinator on any operating system and CPU architecture where you can fulfil these requirements.

Dependencies

To get started you need rsync because some RPKI repositories still use it as its main means of distribution. Some of the cryptographic primitives used by Routinator require a C toolchain. Lastly, you need Rust because that’s the programming language that Routinator has been written in.

rsync

Currently, Routinator requires the rsync executable to be in your path. Due to the nature of rsync, it is unclear which particular version you need at the very least, but whatever is being shipped with current Linux and *BSD distributions, as well as macOS should be fine. Alternatively, you can download rsync from the Samba website.

On Windows, Routinator requires the rsync version that comes with Cygwin – make sure to select rsync during the installation phase.

C Toolchain

Some of the libraries Routinator depends on require a C toolchain to be present. Your system probably has some easy way to install the minimum set of packages to build from C sources. For example, this command will install everything you need on Debian/Ubuntu:

apt install build-essential

If you are unsure, try to run cc on a command line. If there is a complaint about missing input files, you are probably good to go.

Rust

The Rust compiler runs on, and compiles to, a great number of platforms, though not all of them are equally supported. The official Rust Platform Support page provides an overview of the various support levels.

While some system distributions include Rust as system packages, Routinator relies on a relatively new version of Rust, currently 1.70 or newer. We therefore suggest to use the canonical Rust installation via a tool called rustup.

Assuming you already have curl installed, you can install rustup and Rust by simply entering:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Alternatively, visit the Rust website for other installation methods.

Building and Updating

In Rust, a library or executable program such as Routinator is called a crate. Crates are published on crates.io, the Rust package registry. Cargo is the Rust package manager. It is a tool that allows Rust packages to declare their various dependencies and ensure that you’ll always get a repeatable build.

Cargo fetches and builds Routinator’s dependencies into an executable binary for your platform. By default you install from crates.io, but you can for example also install from a specific Git URL, as explained below.

Installing the latest Routinator release from crates.io is as simple as running:

cargo install --locked routinator

The command will build Routinator and install it in the same directory that Cargo itself lives in, likely $HOME/.cargo/bin. This means Routinator will be in your path, too.

Updating

If you want to update to the latest version of Routinator, it’s recommended to update Rust itself as well, using:

rustup update

Use the --force option to overwrite an existing version with the latest Routinator release:

cargo install --locked --force routinator

Installing Specific Versions

If you want to install a specific version of Routinator using Cargo, explicitly use the --version option. If needed, use the --force option to overwrite an existing version:

cargo install --locked --force routinator --version 0.9.0-rc2

All new features of Routinator are built on a branch and merged via a pull request, allowing you to easily try them out using Cargo. If you want to try a specific branch from the repository you can use the --git and --branch options:

cargo install --git https://github.com/NLnetLabs/routinator.git --branch main

Enabling or Disabling Features

When you build Routinator, “features” provide a mechanism to express conditional compilation and optional dependencies. The Routinator package defines a set of named features in the [features] table of Cargo.toml. The table also defines if a feature is enabled or disabled by default.

Routinator currently has the following features:

socks — Enabled by default: Allow the configuration of a SOCKS proxy.
ui — Enabled by default: Download and build the the routinator-ui crate to run the user interface.
native-tls — Disabled by default: Use the native TLS implementation of your system instead of rustls.
rta — Disabled by default: Let Routinator validate Resource Tagged Attestations.
aspa — Disabled by default: Let Routinator validate ASPA objects.

Note

ASPA support is temporarily behind a feature flag while the draft is under discussion in the IETF. This way operators can gain operational experience without unintended side effects.

To disable the features that are enabled by default, use the --no-default-features option. You can then choose which features you want using the --features option, listing each feature separated by commas.

For example, if you want to build Routinator without the user interface, make sure SOCKS support is retained and use the native TLS implementation, enter the following command:

cargo install --locked --no-default-features --features socks,native-tls routinator

If you want to enable a specific feature in the container, this is done via Docker build args, e.g.

docker build . --build-arg CARGO_ARGS="--features native-tls"

Statically Linked Routinator

While Rust binaries are mostly statically linked, they depend on libc which, as least as glibc that is standard on Linux systems, is somewhat difficult to link statically. This is why Routinator binaries are actually dynamically linked on glibc systems and can only be transferred between systems with the same glibc versions.

However, Rust can build binaries based on the alternative implementation named musl that can easily be statically linked. Building such binaries is easy with rustup. You need to install musl and the correct musl target such as x86_64-unknown-linux-musl for x86_64 Linux systems. Then you can just build Routinator for that target.

On a Debian (and presumably Ubuntu) system, enter the following:

sudo apt-get install musl-tools
rustup target add x86_64-unknown-linux-musl
cargo build --target=x86_64-unknown-linux-musl --release

Platform Specific Instructions

For some platforms, rustup cannot provide binary releases to install directly. The Rust Platform Support page lists several platforms where official binary releases are not available, but Rust is still guaranteed to build. For these platforms, automated tests are not run so it’s not guaranteed to produce a working build, but they often work to quite a good degree.

OpenBSD

On OpenBSD, patches are required to get Rust running correctly, but these are well maintained and offer the latest version of Rust quite quickly.

Rust can be installed on OpenBSD by running:

pkg_add rust