Publish bundled binary on Windows loses execution permission

[BusyJay]

Problem

When publishing a crate with bundled binaries on Windows, all the permission of binaries become 644.

Possible Solution(s)
Publish it on *nix instead.

Notes

Output of cargo version
cargo 1.40.0 (bc8e4c8 2019-11-22)

[ehuss]

Can you provide a reproduction or more details? I did a quick test with packaging a project with an executable, and the executable retained its permissions.

[BusyJay]

I published protobuf-build 0.11.0 on Windows and downloaded it on Linux, only to find that binaries in bin directory has permissions 644. I published it again using the same single step cargo publish on Linux, now binaries retain their own original permissions.

[BusyJay]

You can test it without uploading. Take protobuf-build as an example:

PS C:\Users\jay\protobuf-build> cargo package
...
PS C:\Users\jay\protobuf-build> tar tvf .\target\package\protobuf-build-0.11.0.crate
-rw-r--r--  0 0      0          44 Mar 16 17:52 protobuf-build-0.11.0/.gitignore
-rw-r--r--  0 0      0         825 Mar 16 17:52 protobuf-build-0.11.0/.travis.yml
-rw-r--r--  0 0      0     4867908 Mar 16 17:52 protobuf-build-0.11.0/bin/protoc-linux-aarch_64
-rw-r--r--  0 0      0     6887392 Mar 16 17:52 protobuf-build-0.11.0/bin/protoc-linux-ppcle_64
-rw-r--r--  0 0      0     4595900 Mar 16 17:52 protobuf-build-0.11.0/bin/protoc-linux-x86_32
-rw-r--r--  0 0      0     4969752 Mar 16 17:52 protobuf-build-0.11.0/bin/protoc-linux-x86_64
-rw-r--r--  0 0      0    10382660 Mar 16 17:52 protobuf-build-0.11.0/bin/protoc-osx-x86_64
-rw-r--r--  0 0      0     2629632 Mar 16 17:52 protobuf-build-0.11.0/bin/protoc-win32.exe
-rw-r--r--  0 0      0        1095 Mar 16 17:52 protobuf-build-0.11.0/Cargo.toml.orig
-rw-r--r--  0 0      0        1655 Mar 16 19:29 protobuf-build-0.11.0/Cargo.toml
-rw-r--r--  0 0      0         902 Mar 16 17:52 protobuf-build-0.11.0/README.md
-rw-r--r--  0 0      0        7752 Mar 16 17:52 protobuf-build-0.11.0/src/lib.rs
-rw-r--r--  0 0      0         716 Mar 16 17:52 protobuf-build-0.11.0/src/prost_impl.rs
-rw-r--r--  0 0      0        6655 Mar 16 17:52 protobuf-build-0.11.0/src/protobuf_impl.rs
-rw-r--r--  0 0      0       23899 Mar 16 17:52 protobuf-build-0.11.0/src/wrapper.rs
-rw-r--r--  0 0      0          74 Mar 16 19:29 protobuf-build-0.11.0/.cargo_vcs_info.json

[ehuss]

Ah. AFAIK, Windows doesn't exactly have the same concept of POSIX permission modes (there is no "execute" bit). More or less we only know if something is a directory or file, and whether or not it is readonly. If you extract the archive on Windows, you should see that the .exe file should still be executable.

If this is being published for other platforms, I would recommend not publishing from windows.

[BusyJay]

Or we can fix it by reading files from git. Actually using git to build an archive on Windows preserve the permission bits.

PS C:\Users\jay\protobuf-build> git archive --format=tar.gz master -o test.tar.gz
PS C:\Users\jay\protobuf-build> tar tvf .\test.tar.gz                                                                                                                                                                           -rw-rw-r--  0 root   root       44 Mar 16 17:11 .gitignore
-rw-rw-r--  0 root   root      825 Mar 16 17:11 .travis.yml
-rw-rw-r--  0 root   root     1095 Mar 16 17:11 Cargo.toml
-rw-rw-r--  0 root   root      902 Mar 16 17:11 README.md
drwxrwxr-x  0 root   root        0 Mar 16 17:11 bin/
-rwxrwxr-x  0 root   root  4867908 Mar 16 17:11 bin/protoc-linux-aarch_64
-rwxrwxr-x  0 root   root  6887392 Mar 16 17:11 bin/protoc-linux-ppcle_64
-rwxrwxr-x  0 root   root  4595900 Mar 16 17:11 bin/protoc-linux-x86_32
-rwxrwxr-x  0 root   root  4969752 Mar 16 17:11 bin/protoc-linux-x86_64
-rwxrwxr-x  0 root   root 10382660 Mar 16 17:11 bin/protoc-osx-x86_64
-rwxrwxr-x  0 root   root  2629632 Mar 16 17:11 bin/protoc-win32.exe
drwxrwxr-x  0 root   root        0 Mar 16 17:11 src/
-rw-rw-r--  0 root   root     7752 Mar 16 17:11 src/lib.rs
-rw-rw-r--  0 root   root      716 Mar 16 17:11 src/prost_impl.rs
-rw-rw-r--  0 root   root     6655 Mar 16 17:11 src/protobuf_impl.rs
-rw-rw-r--  0 root   root    23899 Mar 16 17:11 src/wrapper.rs
drwxrwxr-x  0 root   root        0 Mar 16 17:11 tests/
-rw-rw-r--  0 root   root      431 Mar 16 17:11 tests/Cargo.toml
-rw-rw-r--  0 root   root      138 Mar 16 17:11 tests/build.rs
drwxrwxr-x  0 root   root        0 Mar 16 17:11 tests/proto/
-rw-rw-r--  0 root   root      408 Mar 16 17:11 tests/proto/nested.proto
drwxrwxr-x  0 root   root        0 Mar 16 17:11 tests/src/
-rw-rw-r--  0 root   root      238 Mar 16 17:11 tests/src/lib.rs

[ehuss]

That sounds interesting! Cargo uses the git2 library, does that have a way to access permissions? Does the tar library support a way to set them?

[alexcrichton]

We currently slurp up filesystem permissions here and on Windows files are always 0o644 (or 0o444 but that's not too relevant).

We can pretty easily tweak the tar header and set different permissions, but we'll need a location to source them from. If git's got all the information though seems reasonable to read it from there!

[luser]

I understand that this is how the protoc compiler gets packaged effectively everywhere but I'd like to go on record as saying that I think that publishing executables in crate packages is not a good practice and we should not encourage it.

[epage]

We have #4413 for warning people against distributing binaries.