# Share Rustdoc — Internal Crate Docs Without docs.rs

Canonical: https://commareports.com/share-rustdoc
Published: 2026-08-31

> cargo doc builds target/doc and stops. docs.rs only serves published crates, so private and workspace crates have nowhere to live. Publish the folder: search intact, one link per release.

# Share rustdoc

Rust's documentation story is excellent right up to the point where the
crate is private. `docs.rs` builds and hosts documentation for everything
published to crates.io, beautifully, for free — and has nothing at all to
say about your company's internal `platform-core` crate, which is the one
your team actually needs docs for.

So `cargo doc` output lives in `target/doc/` and gets read by whoever ran
the command.

## Build it

```bash
cargo doc --no-deps
# → target/doc/<crate_name>/index.html
```

`--no-deps` is close to mandatory. Without it, cargo documents the entire
dependency tree — tens of thousands of files for a normal project, which
is both unpublishable and not what anyone wanted.

```
target/doc/
├── my_crate/index.html      # the entry page
├── my_crate/struct.Foo.html # one page per item
├── static.files/            # css, js
└── search-index.js
```

## Drop the folder in

Drag `target/doc/` (or a zip of it) into
[Comma](https://commareports.com/):

- The crate's `index.html` becomes the **report body** — the page carrying
  the comment layer.
- Item pages, `static.files/` and the search index upload alongside it,
  with relative references rewritten to the uploaded copies.
- Scripts run inside a sandboxed iframe (`allow-scripts`, no
  `allow-same-origin`), so **search**, the theme picker and the
  expand/collapse controls keep working.

One URL. No bucket, no internal web server, no `python -m http.server` in
a tmux session someone will kill.

## From the release job

```bash
cargo doc --no-deps

curl -fsS -X PATCH "https://commareports.com/api/v1/reports/$REPORT_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COMMA_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "$(jq -n --rawfile html target/doc/my_crate/index.html \
        --arg title "my_crate — $(git describe --tags --always)" \
        '{title: $title, html: $html}')"
```

The API is JSON-only, so the item pages go up through
`POST /api/v1/reports/$REPORT_ID/assets` as base64 — one call per file,
worth scripting once. See the [API reference](/docs/api) and
[publishing from CI](/ci).

`PATCH`ing one saved id gives the crate a permanent address that tracks
the current release, with a revision per publish. That history answers
"when did this trait get a new required method?" better than reading the
changelog someone forgot to update.

## Workspaces

`cargo doc --workspace --no-deps` documents every member crate into the
same `target/doc/`, cross-linked. Publish the folder and the links between
crates resolve, which is the thing that makes workspace docs worth having
over per-crate ones.

Watch the file count — see Limits below.

## Docs review, on the docs

Rust's type signatures carry a lot, which is exactly why the doc comments
tend to be thin: the signature looks self-explanatory, so nobody writes
down the part that isn't. What a `Result::Err` variant actually means,
which invariants the constructor assumes, whether the function can block.

Published, that feedback lands **on the item**. Select the description,
leave a thread — "this doesn't say the lock is held across the await" —
and it stays anchored to that function across docs builds. See
[commenting on HTML](/comment-on-html).

## Who can see it

Per report: private, your team, any signed-in user with the link, or
public. An internal crate gets a team report. Domain-gating, password
gates and expiring links are Enterprise. See
[sharing & access control](/docs/sharing).

## Limits

- **Entry HTML: 5 MB.** Assets: 25 MB per file, **250 MB and 500 files
  total** — the binding constraint. A large workspace's rustdoc exceeds
  500 pages easily; publish the crate under review, or the public API
  surface, rather than everything.
- **Scripts run, sandboxed** — no same-origin access.
- **60 requests/minute per token.**

## Try it

Comma is free — unlimited reports, unlimited commenters, unlimited
revision history.

**[Publish crate docs →](https://commareports.com/)**

### Related

- [Share a Rust coverage report](/share-rust-coverage-report)
- [Share Javadoc](/share-javadoc) · [Share TypeDoc output](/share-typedoc) · [Share Doxygen docs](/share-doxygen-docs)
- [Share Sphinx docs](/share-sphinx-docs) · [Share OpenAPI docs](/share-openapi-docs)
- [GitHub Pages alternatives](/alternatives/github-pages-alternatives)