Install cargo-binutils with Homebrew, apt, Nix, pacman, dnf

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• cargo-cov
• cargo-nm
• cargo-objcopy
• cargo-objdump
• cargo-profdata
• cargo-readobj
• cargo-size
• cargo-strip
• rust-ar
• rust-as
• rust-cov
• rust-ld
• rust-lld
• rust-nm
• rust-objcopy
• rust-objdump
• rust-profdata
• rust-readobj
• rust-size
• rust-strip

Project history

The crate appeared on crates.io in June 2018 as a proxy for llvm-nm, llvm-objdump, llvm-size, and related tools. Early crate metadata pointed at Jorge Aparicio's japaric/cargo-binutils repository, and the project later settled under the rust-embedded organization, where the README says it is maintained by the Embedded Working Group Tools team while also noting that it is not an official Rust project.

Its scope grew from a small set of cargo-nm, cargo-objcopy, cargo-objdump, cargo-profdata, and cargo-size commands into a broader wrapper set that also includes rust-* command proxies such as rust-objcopy, rust-size, rust-readobj, rust-strip, rust-lld, and rust-cov. The current README frames the tool as sugar over LLVM tools from rustup's llvm-tools component.

Adoption history

cargo-binutils became a standard convenience tool in embedded Rust because it connects Cargo builds with artifact inspection commands that embedded developers already need for symbol tables, section sizes, disassembly, and binary conversion. Its maintenance home in rust-embedded and its packaging across Homebrew, Debian, Ubuntu, Nix, pacman, and Fedora-style package names reflect that it escaped the purely crates.io audience.

Crates.io reports more than 2.7 million total downloads and the current crate metadata classifies it under command-line utilities and development tools. That adoption is reinforced by rustup's llvm-tools component: cargo-binutils does not ship its own LLVM, it makes the toolchain-provided LLVM tools easier to call.

How it is used

A typical installation is `cargo install cargo-binutils` followed by `rustup component add llvm-tools`. Users then run commands such as `cargo size --release`, `cargo objdump --release -- --disassemble`, `cargo nm --release`, or the lower-level `rust-size` and `rust-objdump` proxies.

The important usage pattern is build-and-inspect: cargo-binutils can accept familiar Cargo selectors such as `--bin`, `--example`, `--lib`, `--target`, and `--release`, build the requested target, and pass the generated artifact path to the LLVM tool.

Why package nerds care

For package nerds, cargo-binutils is interesting because it packages compiler-toolchain internals as stable-feeling Cargo subcommands without vendoring the underlying tools. It sits at the boundary between rustup components, LLVM command naming, Cargo metadata, and distribution packaging.

It is especially notable in embedded packaging culture: size reports, symbol listings, object copying, and disassembly are routine release tasks for firmware, and cargo-binutils made those tasks reproducible from a Rust package-manager workflow.

Timeline

• 2018-04-06: Current rust-embedded/cargo-binutils GitHub repository was created.
• 2018-06-29: cargo-binutils 0.1.0 was published on crates.io with cargo-nm, cargo-objcopy, cargo-objdump, cargo-profdata, and cargo-size binaries.
• 2018-12-19: The 0.1.6 crate metadata still referenced the earlier japaric/cargo-binutils repository.
• 2020: The 0.2 and 0.3 lines expanded the proxy set with more rust-* and cargo-* LLVM tools.
• 2025-08-26: Version 0.4.0 was published, listing the broader command set including cargo-cov, cargo-readobj, cargo-strip, rust-lld, and rust-as.

Related projects

• rustup's llvm-tools component supplies the LLVM binaries that cargo-binutils invokes.
• LLVM binutils such as llvm-nm, llvm-objdump, llvm-objcopy, llvm-size, llvm-readobj, and llvm-strip are the underlying tools exposed by the package.
• The rust-embedded working group ecosystem is the cultural home for many of the workflows cargo-binutils targets.

Sources

• GitHub repository API metadata: https://api.github.com/repos/rust-embedded/cargo-binutils
• Official README: https://github.com/rust-embedded/cargo-binutils#readme
• Package-manager adoption from source_facts.package-manager.
• crates.io API metadata and versions: https://crates.io/api/v1/crates/cargo-binutils