nomicon/README.md

# The Rustonomicon

The Dark Arts of Advanced and Unsafe Rust Programming

Nicknamed "the Nomicon."

## NOTE: This is a draft document, and may contain serious errors

> Instead of the programs I had hoped for, there came only a shuddering blackness
and ineffable loneliness; and I saw at last a fearful truth which no one had
ever dared to breathe before — the unwhisperable secret of secrets — The fact
that this language of stone and stridor is not a sentient perpetuation of Rust
as London is of Old London and Paris of Old Paris, but that it is in fact
quite unsafe, its sprawling body imperfectly embalmed and infested with queer
animate things which have nothing to do with it as it was in compilation.

This book digs into all the awful details that are necessary to understand in
order to write correct Unsafe Rust programs. Due to the nature of this problem,
it may lead to unleashing untold horrors that shatter your psyche into a billion
infinitesimal fragments of despair.

### Requirements

Building the Nomicon requires [mdBook]. To get it:

[mdBook]: https://github.com/azerupi/mdBook

```bash
$ cargo install mdbook
```

### Building

To build the Nomicon:

```bash
$ mdbook build
```

The output will be in the `book` subdirectory. To check it out, open it in
your web browser.

_Firefox:_
```bash
$ firefox book/index.html                       # Linux
$ open -a "Firefox" book/index.html             # OS X
$ Start-Process "firefox.exe" .\book\index.html # Windows (PowerShell)
$ start firefox.exe .\book\index.html           # Windows (Cmd)
```

_Chrome:_
```bash
$ google-chrome book/index.html                 # Linux
$ open -a "Google Chrome" book/index.html       # OS X
$ Start-Process "chrome.exe" .\book\index.html  # Windows (PowerShell)
$ start chrome.exe .\book\index.html            # Windows (Cmd)
```

To run the tests:

```bash
$ mdbook test
```

## Contributing

Given that the Nomicon is still in a draft state, we'd love your help! Please feel free to open
issues about anything, and send in PRs for things you'd like to fix or change. If your change is
large, please open an issue first, so we can make sure that it's something we'd accept before you
go through the work of getting a PR together.