mach

mach is a Python program that does plenty of things to make working on Servo easier, like building and running Servo, running tests, and updating dependencies.

Windows users: you will need to replace ./mach with .\mach in the commands in this book.

Use --help to list the subcommands, or get help with a specific subcommand:

$ ./mach --help
$ ./mach build --help

When you use mach to run another program, such as servoshell, that program may have its own options with the same names as mach options. You can use --, surrounded by spaces, to tell mach not to touch any subsequent options and leave them for the other program.

$ ./mach run --help         # Gets help for `mach run`.
$ ./mach run -d --help      # Still gets help for `mach run`.
$ ./mach run -d -- --help   # Gets help for the debug build of servoshell.

This also applies to the Servo unit tests, where there are three layers of options: mach options, cargo test options, and libtest options.

$ ./mach test-unit --help           # Gets help for `mach test-unit`.
$ ./mach test-unit -- --help        # Gets help for `cargo test`.
$ ./mach test-unit -- -- --help     # Gets help for the test harness (libtest).

Work is ongoing to make it possible to build Servo without mach. Where possible, consider whether you can use native Cargo functionality before adding new functionality to mach.