create a message format targeted at ci / build pipelines

[kurtbuilds]

Problem

Currently, it's surprisingly difficult to get the artifact built by cargo-build . (Prior discussion: #3757)

I have a custom build pipeline where it's helpful to both show human ANSI colored diagnostics (so if something goes wrong, I can see it easily in the logs), but also necessary to print the artifact path to stdout for the build pipeline to manage.

I built a very small wrapper tool (https://github.com/kurtbuilds/cargo_build_artifact) that runs cargo in json-diagnostic-rendered-ansi, and depending on the message that's output, sends diagnostics and errors to stderr, swallows other diagnostics, and emits a single line - the path of the built artifact - to stdout.

Curious if cargo team would support a PR to merge that functionality in under a new message-format - (maybe called human-with-build-artifacts to build on naming conventions already used?)

Proposed Solution

Create a new message-format (tentatively called human-with-build-artifacts) that outputs colored warnings and errors to stderr, and prints build artifact paths, one per line, to stdout.

[epage]

For at least myself, this feels too specialized. This will work for you but there are slight variants that people might need to work with other use cases.

[weihanglo]

I built a very small wrapper tool…

I am so happy that it actually works for people to customize their workflow!

Currently, it's surprisingly difficult to get the artifact built by cargo-build . (Prior discussion: #3757)

I would say a new message format is not an ideal solution to this. Possibly better solutions in my mind would be like a better build plan support, or a query interface for users to get metadata for a package.

[kurtbuilds]

Ok!