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Building coopdx-rs from source gives you full control over the binary — debug symbols for development, or a size-optimized release binary for distribution. The project uses a standard Cargo workspace with no custom build scripts; the only external requirement beyond Rust itself is the SDL2 family of system libraries.

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Prerequisites

Before building, make sure you have the following installed on your system.
coopdx-rs targets Rust edition 2024, which requires Rust 1.85 or later. Earlier toolchain versions will fail to compile. Run rustup update stable to update if needed.
Rust toolchain — Install via rustup.rs: 
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
SDL2 development libraries — The launcher links against SDL2, SDL2_image, SDL2_mixer, and SDL2_ttf at compile time. Install the *-dev packages for your distribution: 
sudo apt install libsdl2-dev libsdl2-image-dev libsdl2-mixer-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev
All four SDL2 libraries are required. A partial installation — for example, missing SDL2_ttf — will cause a linker error during cargo build.

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Build commands

Clone the repository and build with Cargo as usual. There are no code-generation steps or extra setup targets. 
# Debug build (fast compilation, unoptimized, with debug symbols)
cargo build

# Release build (optimized, stripped, LTO — see profile details below)
cargo build --release
# Output binary: target/release/sm64coopdx-launcher
During development, use the debug build for faster iteration. Switch to --release when packaging or measuring performance — the size and speed difference is substantial due to the opt-level = "z" and LTO settings.

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Release profile settings

The [profile.release] section in Cargo.toml is tuned for a small, fast distribution binary: 
[profile.release]
opt-level = "z"      # Optimize for binary size
lto = true           # Link-time optimization (cross-crate inlining)
strip = true         # Strip debug symbols from the output binary
codegen-units = 1    # Single codegen unit for maximum optimization
SettingValueEffect
opt-level"z"Minimizes binary size, accepting slightly slower code than "3"
ltotrueEnables full link-time optimization across all crates
striptrueRemoves debug symbols; the output binary contains no DWARF data
codegen-units1Forces a single compilation unit, allowing maximum inlining and dead-code elimination
strip = true means target/release/sm64coopdx-launcher cannot be used with rust-gdb or rust-lldb directly. If you need to debug a release build, temporarily set strip = false and opt-level = 1.

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Testing and linting

The project ships with a unit test suite covering the gamepad input mapping and other pure functions: 
# Run the full test suite (122 unit tests)
cargo test

# Run Clippy lints
cargo clippy
The gamepad tests in gp_tests (joy_a_is_confirm, hat_up_is_nav_up, etc.) require no SDL2 context and run instantly. They validate the same joy_button_to_action and hat_to_action pure functions that the real event loop dispatches through, so passing tests mean the gamepad input paths are correct.

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Dependencies

All dependencies are declared in Cargo.toml. No vendoring or patching is required; cargo build fetches them from crates.io automatically.
CrateVersionPurpose
sdl20.38Window, renderer, input, audio — core runtime
serde + serde_json1Config serialization (profiles, mod database)
reqwest0.12 (blocking)HTTP downloads in the mod Download Browser
zip2ZIP extraction for downloaded mod archives
ctrlc3Graceful Ctrl+C shutdown signal handling
dirs5XDG directory resolution (~/.local/share, ~/.config)
toml0.8Parsing launcher.toml configuration files
log + env_logger0.4 / 0.11Structured logging (set RUST_LOG=debug to enable)
md50.7ROM file validation (checks the US SM64 baserom MD5)
The sdl2 crate is built with four features: image, mixer, ttf, and unsafe_textures. The unsafe_textures feature makes Texture 'static by removing phantom lifetime parameters. This eliminates borrow-checker conflicts between Canvas and Texture during rendering and is the standard production pattern for SDL2 Rust applications — it carries no additional unsafety beyond the underlying C FFI that the crate wraps.

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