TL;DR — Quick Summary

sccache caches compilation results across builds. Speed up Rust, C, and C++ builds by caching compiler outputs locally, on S3, GCS, or Azure. Like ccache but for Rust too.

sccache makes builds faster. Cache compilations locally or in the cloud — rebuild in seconds.

Installation

# Cargo
cargo install sccache

# macOS
brew install sccache

Setup

# Set as Rust compiler wrapper
export RUSTC_WRAPPER=sccache

# Add to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc for persistence
echo 'export RUSTC_WRAPPER=sccache' >> ~/.bashrc

# For C/C++ (set CC/CXX)
export CC="sccache gcc"
export CXX="sccache g++"

Usage

# Build with sccache (automatic with RUSTC_WRAPPER)
cargo build

# Show cache statistics
sccache --show-stats

# Start sccache server
sccache --start-server

# Clear cache
sccache --zero-stats

Summary

  • sccache caches Rust, C, and C++ compilation results
  • Drop-in replacement: set RUSTC_WRAPPER=sccache
  • Cloud backends: S3, GCS, Azure, Redis, Memcached
  • Shows cache hit rates with —show-stats
  • Written in Rust by Mozilla — production-proven