Introduction

factorio-rs lets you write Factorio mods in Rust. A CLI tool reads your .rs sources, lowers them through an intermediate representation, and emits a standard Factorio mod (Lua + info.json + optional locale).

It does not compile Rust to native code or WASM for Factorio. The game still loads Lua. Think of factorio-rs as an authoring layer that transpiles to Factorio’s modding API.

Pieces

Piece	Crate / binary	Role
SDK	factorio-rs	Dependency for your mod crate (API stubs + macros)
CLI	package factorio-rs-cli, binary factorio-rs	init, build, package, install, open

Pipeline

1. Discover stage modules (control, settings, data, shared, …).
2. Lower Rust (syn) into IR.
3. Optionally prune unreachable code (release-style profiles).
4. Generate Lua under output_dir (default dist/), including stage entry files and locale .cfg files declared with locale!.

Generated Lua headers look like:

-- Generated by factorio-rs@0.1.2
-- Profile: debug
-- Module: `control`

What still uses Cargo

• cargo check / cargo build validate your Rust (macros, types).
• factorio-rs build does not invoke Cargo; it transpiles sources directly.

You typically iterate with both: check with Cargo, emit the mod with the CLI.

Language surface

Only a subset of Rust is transpiled. See Language support for statements, expressions, Option / Vec behaviour, and common unsupported constructs. Optional Tracing macros lower to colored game.print. Generated API stubs prefer concrete concepts and Identification enums over LuaAny.