Text Editors
Applications for editing text.
For the most comprehensive and user-friendly experience, VS Code (with the rust-analyzer extension), IntelliJ IDEA (with the Rust plugin)or CLion (with the Rust plugin) are highly recommended. VS Code, in particular, has become popular due to its performance and the quality of the rust-analyzer extension.
Vim, Emacs, and Neovim offer great flexibility and power, but they require a higher initial configuration investment. Sublime Text and Atom can also be configured for decent Rust support, but VS Code has largely taken over in popularity.
IDEs and Text Editors with Rust Support
| IDE/Editor | Rust Support Level | Key Features/Notes |
|---|---|---|
VS Code⮳ (with rust-analyzer extension) | Excellent | rust-analyzer⮳ provides excellent language server support, offering code completion, diagnostics, refactoring, and more. Also consider the CodeLLDB, Dependi and Even Better TOML extensions. |
RustRover⮳ | Excellent | It is available for free for non-commercial use. |
IntelliJ IDEA (with Rust plugin) | Excellent | Comprehensive support including code completion, refactoring, debugging, navigation, and integration with Cargo. The official Rust plugin provides the most complete IDE experience. |
CLion JetBrains IDE (with Rust plugin) | Excellent | CLion, JetBrains' C/C++ IDE, also has a Rust plugin that leverages rust-analyzer. Provides a robust IDE experience similar to IntelliJ IDEA. If you have a JetBrains license, CLion is your go-to editor for Rust in JetBrains' IDE suite. |
Helix editor⮳(github)⮳ | Install the rust-analyzer binary⮳ | |
Zed⮳ | Excellent | zed is available for macOS, Linux, and soon for Windows. Written in Rust. |
Sublime Text⮳ (with LSP and related plugins) | Good | Can achieve good Rust support via the LSP (Language Server Protocol) and plugins like rust-analyzer. Requires some setup. See "Rust enhanced" package⮳. |
Atom⮳ (with LSP and related packages) | Good | Similar to Sublime Text, Atom can be configured with LSP and rust-analyzer for decent Rust support. Atom is no longer actively developed. |
Vim (with plugins like coc.nvim or vim-lsp) | Good (Highly Configurable) | With the right plugins (e.g., coc.nvim, vim-lsp, and rust-analyzer), Vim can be a very powerful Rust editor. Requires more configuration than other options. Configure Vim for Rust⮳. |
Emacs⮳ with plugins like lsp-mode or eglot (or derivatives like Doom Emacs, Spacemacs⮳, etc.) | Good (Highly Configurable) | Similar to Vim, Emacs can be configured for excellent Rust development with LSP and rust-analyzer. Also requires a learning curve for configuration. Configure Emacs for Rust⮳. |
Neovim⮳ (with plugins like coc.nvim or nvim-lsp) | Good (Highly Configurable) | Neovim, a fork of Vim, also benefits from the LSP and rust-analyzer through plugins like coc.nvim or nvim-lsp. |
Kate | Decent | Provides syntax highlighting and some basic code completion. LSP support might be available through plugins. |
Visual Studio⮳ | Configure rust-analyzer for Visual Studio⮳ | |
Lapce⮳ | Open source, written in Rust | |
Xcode⮳ | ||
Eclipse Corrosion⮳ | It provides development tools for Rust and Cargo inside the Eclipse IDE |
Examples
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