How to solve the Rust+TLS+Windows Nightmare

Problem

Developing with rusttls or openssl can be a huge pain when working with packages such as actix or awc. These packages tend to throw SSL errors when making requests or using a proxy to pass to any https url.

Solution

Install Visual Studio

• Install the Compoment for Windows Development and Linux Embedded Development for C++ tools.

Install Rust

Set the toolchain to stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

  rustup toolchain install stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
  rustup default stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

Install Msys2

In msys2 install:

  pacman -Syu openssl-devel pkg-config mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain

Setting up vcpkg

1. Make a new folder: mkdir -p C:\tools
2. Clone vcpkg: git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg
3. Navigate to C:\tools\vcpkg
4. Run the following install commands:

  ./bootstrap-vcpkg.bat
  ./vcpkg.exe install openssl-windows:x64-windows
  ./vcpkg.exe install openssl:x64-windows-static
  ./vcpkg.exe integrate install

Setting up Openssl Root Cert

1. Create the directory: mkdir -p C:\Program Files\OpenSSL-Win64\certs
2. Download the cacert.pem
3. Place it in the certs directory.

Finally update all our environments:

1. Add to path:
   • C:\msys64\mingw64\bin
2. Add the following environment variables:
   • VCPKG_ROOT=C:\tools\vcpkg
   • SSL_CERT_FILE=C:\Program Files\OpenSSL-Win64\certs\cacert.pem
   • RUSTFLAGS=-Ctarget-feature=+crt-static
   • OPENSSL_NO_VENDOR=1

Conclusion

Developing with Rust and Windows can be a relatively painless process but just rusttls or openssl can be a huge pain when working with packages such as actix or awc. There might be an easier way to accomplish this but these are the steps that I have found to be the most reliable and repeatable across multiple systems.

Sources

Thank you to these lovely peeps for getting me down the right path.

• Stackoverflow: How to work with OpenSSL for Rust within a Windows development environment
• Microsoft vcpkg