Cargo, the Rust Package Manager

RecipeCratesCategories
Basic cargo usagecargo-websitecat-development-tools
Cargo.toml and lock filescargo-websitecat-development-tools

Basic cargo usage

The Cargo book⮳ cat-development-tools

cargo help or cargo <command> --help

cargo --version

# Create a new project. Can add --bin or --lib
cargo new hello_cargo

# Creates an executable file in target/debug/hello_cargo
cargo build
cargo build --release

# Build and run a project in one step
cargo run

# Pass arguments to the program and collect output
cargo run -- arg1 somefile.txt > output.txt

# Quickly checks your code to make sure it compiles but doesn’t produce an executable
cargo check

# Removes build artifacts
cargo clean

# Looks for tests to run in two places: in each of your src files and any tests in tests/.
cargo test

# Updates all dependencies - respect the SemVer constraints in cargo.toml
cargo update
# Updates just “regex”
cargo update -p regex

Cargo.toml and lock files

# Configure the package
[package]
name = "hello_cargo"
version = "0.1.0"
edition = "2021"

# See more keys and their definitions at
# <https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/manifest.html>

[dependencies]

# Reference a crate to be pulled from `crates.io`
time = "0.1.12"
# This is equivalent to the ^0.1.12 SemVer version range.
# `cargo update time` should update to version 0.1.13 if it is the latest 0.1.z release,
# but would not update to 0.2.0

# Reference a Git repo
regex = { git = "https://github.com/rust-lang/regex.git" }

# Reference a sub-crate
# Points to folder `hello_utils`, inside of which a `Cargo.toml` and `src` folder
hello_utils = { path = "hello_utils", version = "0.1.0" }

Examples of version requirements and the versions that would be allowed with them:

1.2.3  :=  >=1.2.3, <2.0.0
1.2    :=  >=1.2.0, <2.0.0
1      :=  >=1.0.0, <2.0.0
0.2.3  :=  >=0.2.3, <0.3.0
0.2    :=  >=0.2.0, <0.3.0
0.0.3  :=  >=0.0.3, <0.0.4
0.0    :=  >=0.0.0, <0.1.0
0      :=  >=0.0.0, <1.0.0

Details in Specifying Dependencies⮳

If you’re building a non-end product, such as a rust library that other rust packages will depend on, put Cargo.lock in your .gitignore.

If you’re building an end product, which are executable like command-line tool or an application, or a system library with crate-type of staticlib⮳ or cdylib⮳, check Cargo.lock into git.

# Add dependencies to Cargo.toml from the command line
cargo add actix-web@4.0.0