It turns out that https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/2324 did not
quite work as intended. Chat's new idea is to have this catch-all "CI
results" job and update our branch protection rules to require this
instead.
Our existing path filters for `rust-ci.yml`:
https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/235987843c3d6647c0819c1071f9b9f064673e9c/.github/workflows/rust-ci.yml#L1-L11
made it so that PRs that touch only `README.md` would not trigger those
builds, which is a problem because our branch protection rules are set
as follows:
<img width="1569" height="1883" alt="Screenshot 2025-08-14 at 4 45
59 PM"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5a61f8cc-cdaf-4341-abda-7faa7b46dbd4"
/>
With the existing setup, a change to `README.md` would get stuck in
limbo because not all the CI jobs required to merge would get run. It
turns out that we need to "run" all the jobs, but make them no-ops when
the `codex-rs` and `.github` folders are untouched to get the best of
both worlds.
I asked chat how to fix this, as we want CI to be fast for
documentation-only changes. It had two suggestions:
- Use https://github.com/dorny/paths-filter or some other third-party
action.
- Write an inline Bash script to avoid a third-party dependency.
This PR takes the latter approach so that we are clear about what we're
running in CI.
I put this PR together because I noticed I have to wait quite a bit
longer on my PRs since we added
https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/2242 to catch more build issues.
I think we should think about reigning in our use of create features,
but this should be good enough to speed things up for now.
Users were running into issues with glibc mismatches on arm64 linux. In
the past, we did not provide a musl build for arm64 Linux because we had
trouble getting the openssl dependency to build correctly. Though today
I just tried the same trick in `Cargo.toml` that we were doing for
`x86_64-unknown-linux-musl` (using `openssl-sys` with `features =
["vendored"]`), so I'm not sure what problem we had in the past the
builds "just worked" today!
Though one tweak that did have to be made is that the integration tests
for Seccomp/Landlock empirically require longer timeouts on arm64 linux,
or at least on the `ubuntu-24.04-arm` GitHub Runner. As such, we change
the timeouts for arm64 in `codex-rs/linux-sandbox/tests/landlock.rs`.
Though in solving this problem, I decided I needed a turnkey solution
for testing the Linux build(s) from my Mac laptop, so this PR introduces
`.devcontainer/Dockerfile` and `.devcontainer/devcontainer.json` to
facilitate this. Detailed instructions are in `.devcontainer/README.md`.
We will update `dotslash-config.json` and other release-related scripts
in a follow-up PR.
To date, when handling `shell` and `local_shell` tool calls, we were
spawning new processes using the environment inherited from the Codex
process itself. This means that the sensitive `OPENAI_API_KEY` that
Codex needs to talk to OpenAI models was made available to everything
run by `shell` and `local_shell`. While there are cases where that might
be useful, it does not seem like a good default.
This PR introduces a complex `shell_environment_policy` config option to
control the `env` used with these tool calls. It is inevitably a bit
complex so that it is possible to override individual components of the
policy so without having to restate the entire thing.
Details are in the updated `README.md` in this PR, but here is the
relevant bit that explains the individual fields of
`shell_environment_policy`:
| Field | Type | Default | Description |
| ------------------------- | -------------------------- | ------- |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| `inherit` | string | `core` | Starting template for the
environment:<br>`core` (`HOME`, `PATH`, `USER`, …), `all` (clone full
parent env), or `none` (start empty). |
| `ignore_default_excludes` | boolean | `false` | When `false`, Codex
removes any var whose **name** contains `KEY`, `SECRET`, or `TOKEN`
(case-insensitive) before other rules run. |
| `exclude` | array<string> | `[]` | Case-insensitive glob
patterns to drop after the default filter.<br>Examples: `"AWS_*"`,
`"AZURE_*"`. |
| `set` | table<string,string> | `{}` | Explicit key/value
overrides or additions – always win over inherited values. |
| `include_only` | array<string> | `[]` | If non-empty, a
whitelist of patterns; only variables that match _one_ pattern survive
the final step. (Generally used with `inherit = "all"`.) |
In particular, note that the default is `inherit = "core"`, so:
* if you have extra env variables that you want to inherit from the
parent process, use `inherit = "all"` and then specify `include_only`
* if you have extra env variables where you want to hardcode the values,
the default `inherit = "core"` will work fine, but then you need to
specify `set`
This configuration is not battle-tested, so we will probably still have
to play with it a bit. `core/src/exec_env.rs` has the critical business
logic as well as unit tests.
Though if nothing else, previous to this change:
```
$ cargo run --bin codex -- debug seatbelt -- printenv OPENAI_API_KEY
# ...prints OPENAI_API_KEY...
```
But after this change it does not print anything (as desired).
One final thing to call out about this PR is that the
`configure_command!` macro we use in `core/src/exec.rs` has to do some
complex logic with respect to how it builds up the `env` for the process
being spawned under Landlock/seccomp. Specifically, doing
`cmd.env_clear()` followed by `cmd.envs(&$env_map)` (which is arguably
the most intuitive way to do it) caused the Landlock unit tests to fail
because the processes spawned by the unit tests started failing in
unexpected ways! If we forgo `env_clear()` in favor of updating env vars
one at a time, the tests still pass. The comment in the code talks about
this a bit, and while I would like to investigate this more, I need to
move on for the moment, but I do plan to come back to it to fully
understand what is going on. For example, this suggests that we might
not be able to spawn a C program that calls `env_clear()`, which would
be...weird. We may still have to fiddle with our Landlock config if that
is the case.
Moving to Rust 1.87 introduced a clippy warning that
`SendError<AppEvent>` was too large.
In practice, the only thing we ever did when we got this error was log
it (if the mspc channel is closed, then the app is likely shutting down
or something, so there's not much to do...), so this finally motivated
me to introduce `AppEventSender`, which wraps
`std::sync::mpsc::Sender<AppEvent>` with a `send()` method that invokes
`send()` on the underlying `Sender` and logs an `Err` if it gets one.
This greatly simplifies the code, as many functions that previously
returned `Result<(), SendError<AppEvent>>` now return `()`, so we don't
have to propagate an `Err` all over the place that we don't really
handle, anyway.
This also makes it so we can upgrade to Rust 1.87 in CI.
Previously, our GitHub actions specified the Rust toolchain as
`dtolnay/rust-toolchain@stable`, which meant the version could change
out from under us. In this case, the move from 1.86 to 1.87 introduced
new clippy warnings, causing build failures.
Because it will take a little time to fix all the new clippy warnings,
this PR pins things to 1.86 for now to unbreak the build.
It also replaces `io::Error::new(io::ErrorKind::Other)` with
`io::Error::other()` in preparation for 1.87.
I installed the GitHub Actions extension for VS Code and it started
giving me lint warnings about this line:
https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/a9adb4175c8f19a97e50be53cb6f8fe7ef159762/.github/workflows/rust-ci.yml#L99
Using an env var to track the state of individual steps was not great,
so I did some research about GitHub actions, which led to the discovery
of combining `continue-on-error: true` with `if .. steps.STEP.outcome ==
'failure'...`.
Apparently there is also a `failure()` macro that is supposed to make
this simpler, but I saw a number of complains online about it not
working as expected. Checking `outcome` seems maybe more reliable at the
cost of being slightly more verbose.
https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/855 added the clippy warning to
disallow `unwrap()`, but apparently we were not verifying that tests
were "clippy clean" in CI, so I ended up with a lot of local errors in
VS Code.
This turns on the check in CI and fixes the offenders.
I started this PR because I wanted to share the `format_duration()`
utility function in `codex-rs/exec/src/event_processor.rs` with the TUI.
The question was: where to put it?
`core` should have as few dependencies as possible, so moving it there
would introduce a dependency on `chrono`, which seemed undesirable.
`core` already had this `cli` feature to deal with a similar situation
around sharing common utility functions, so I decided to:
* make `core` feature-free
* introduce `common`
* `common` can have as many "special interest" features as it needs,
each of which can declare their own deps
* the first two features of common are `cli` and `elapsed`
In practice, this meant updating a number of `Cargo.toml` files,
replacing this line:
```toml
codex-core = { path = "../core", features = ["cli"] }
```
with these:
```toml
codex-core = { path = "../core" }
codex-common = { path = "../common", features = ["cli"] }
```
Moving `format_duration()` into its own file gave it some "breathing
room" to add a unit test, so I had Codex generate some tests and new
support for durations over 1 minute.
I discovered that `cargo build` worked for the entire workspace, but not
for the `mcp-client` or `core` crates.
* `mcp-client` failed to build because it underspecified the set of
features it needed from `tokio`.
* `core` failed to build because it was using a "feature" of its own
crate in the default, no-feature version.
This PR fixes the builds and adds a check in CI to defend against this
sort of thing going forward.
The `rust-ci.yml` build appears to be a bit flaky (we're looking into
it...), so to save TypeScript contributors some noise, restrict the
`rust-ci.yml` job so that it only runs on PRs that touch files in
`codex-rs/`.
As stated in `codex-rs/README.md`:
Today, Codex CLI is written in TypeScript and requires Node.js 22+ to
run it. For a number of users, this runtime requirement inhibits
adoption: they would be better served by a standalone executable. As
maintainers, we want Codex to run efficiently in a wide range of
environments with minimal overhead. We also want to take advantage of
operating system-specific APIs to provide better sandboxing, where
possible.
To that end, we are moving forward with a Rust implementation of Codex
CLI contained in this folder, which has the following benefits:
- The CLI compiles to small, standalone, platform-specific binaries.
- Can make direct, native calls to
[seccomp](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/seccomp.2.html) and
[landlock](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/landlock.7.html) in
order to support sandboxing on Linux.
- No runtime garbage collection, resulting in lower memory consumption
and better, more predictable performance.
Currently, the Rust implementation is materially behind the TypeScript
implementation in functionality, so continue to use the TypeScript
implmentation for the time being. We will publish native executables via
GitHub Releases as soon as we feel the Rust version is usable.
Michael Bolin ·
pakrym-oai ·
Rene Leonhardt ·
Parker Thompson ·