Acknowledgements

mbx depends on Cargo and builds on ideas established by earlier compiler caches. In particular, kache directly inspired the project's design. mbx's Cargo display includes code from cargo-pretty and norimel.

Cargo

Cargo resolves dependencies, plans builds, and orchestrates rustc. Its RUSTC_WRAPPER integration lets mbx and other Rust compiler caches wrap compiler invocations.

sccache

sccache predates mbx and established compiler caching in the Rust ecosystem. It reuses compiler work locally and through remote storage, and supports a broader set of compilers and use cases than mbx.

See the comparison with sccache for where mbx makes different tradeoffs.

kache

kache predates mbx and directly inspired its design. It combines a content-addressed RUSTC_WRAPPER cache with C and C++ compiler shims, remote storage, and executable caching.

mbx and kache do not share code. Both aim to make compiled work reusable across checkouts; they differ in process lifecycle, storage management, and remote policy. The comparison with kache explains where mbx took a different direction and where kache may be the better fit.

cargo-pretty

cargo-pretty by romancitodev provides the base for mbx's Cargo display: live crate rows, completed rows that dim as newer ones finish, per-crate timers, and browsable warnings. mbx adds cache statistics and a progress bar colored by hits, misses, and bypasses while retaining Cargo's native run and test execution.

mbx draws the display with norimel, a styled-text block library from romancitodev's nobubbles project. mbx vendors norimel as a private module, so it ships inside mbx rather than as a registry dependency. Both the adapted cargo-pretty code and the vendored norimel keep their upstream MIT licenses, and the repository's NOTICE file records each upstream revision.