Objective-Rust

I made Objective-Rust because I wanted to try writing Rust with classes. It lets me put class-style declarations in .orst files, then translates them into regular Rust. The objrust command can also compile and run the result.

Give it a try

You’ll need Rust installed first, including Cargo and rustc. If you don’t have them yet, install Rust with rustup.

Once Objective-Rust is published on crates.io, install it with:

cargo install objrust-compiler

Or install the version from GitHub:

cargo install --git https://github.com/amrhasanain/objrust.git objrust-compiler

Create a file called hello.orst:

class Animal {
    pub name: String,

    pub fn new(name: String) -> Self {
        Self { name }
    }

    pub fn speak(&self) {
        println!("Hello, I'm {}", self.name);
    }
}

fn main() {
    let cat = Animal::new("Meshmesh".to_string());
    cat.speak();
}

Run it from the folder where you saved the file:

objrust hello.orst --run

That builds and runs the program. ObjRust also saves the Rust it generated in objrust-output/, so you can open it and see how the class was translated.

A few useful commands

# Build and run
objrust hello.orst --run

# Save the generated Rust without compiling it
objrust hello.orst --emit-rust --output hello.rs

# Build an executable with a specific name
objrust hello.orst --output hello.exe

Use objrust --help to see all the options. The short version:

• -o or --output chooses the output file.
• -r or --run runs the program after building it.
• -O or --release asks rustc to optimize the build.
• -S or --emit-rust outputs Rust without building an executable.

If you’ve cloned this repository, you can try the larger example directly:

cargo run -- examples/animals.orst --run

What works so far

ObjRust translates class declarations into Rust structs and impl blocks. The transpiler also supports the extends, virtual, and override syntax shown in examples/animals.orst. Regular Rust code can live in the same file.

This is an early project, so the syntax and compiler are still evolving. If you try it and hit a problem, please open an issue with a small .orst example that reproduces it.

One current limitation

When it builds an executable, the CLI calls rustc directly. That means it doesn’t read dependencies from your project’s Cargo.toml. If your program uses another crate, generate the Rust with --emit-rust and use it in a Cargo project that declares the dependency.

You can also use the transpiler from Rust code:

let rust_source = objective_rust::transpile("class Animal { pub name: String, }")
    .expect("valid ObjRust source");

License

You can use this project under either the Apache License 2.0 (LICENSE) or the MIT license (LICENSE-MIT).