Rust Installation
Install Rust and Create a First Project

Install Rust and Create a First Project

First, install Rustup⮳. On Linux, macOS, or other Unix-like systems (including Windows Subsystem for Linux - WSL), open your terminal and run the following command:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

This command downloads a script and starts the rustup installation. Follow the on-screen prompts.

All tools are installed to the ~/.cargo/bin directory by default. After installation, rustup might ask you to configure your current shell (to update your PATH). You can either restart your terminal or run the command provided by the installer (usually something like source $HOME/.cargo/env on Unix-like systems).

On Windows, it's recommended to visit the official Rust website's installation page⮳ and download the rustup-init.exe installer. Running this executable will guide you through the installation. You may also need the C++ build tools for Visual Studio, which the installer can help you set up.

If you've installed rustup in the past, you can update your installation by running rustup update.

Second, check whether you have Rust installed correctly. Open a new terminal window and check if Rust is installed correctly by running:

rustc --version
cargo --version

These commands should print the installed versions of the Rust compiler (rustc) and the Rust package manager and build tool (cargo).

Third, open the Rust documentation, if needed. You can open the locally installed Rust documentation in your web browser using:

rustup doc

Fourth, you can start creating projects using cargo new and build/run them with cargo build and cargo run.

  • Create a new project:
cargo new hello_world # Create a minimal new project.
cd hello_world
code . # Open VS Code (or your favorite editor).

Edit the code as you wish. cargo new creates a minimal main.rs file in the src subdirectory. You should also review the Cargo.toml package configuration file and append external dependencies using the cargo add command:

cargo add anyhow # Install the `anyhow` library as an external dependency.
  • Build / run the code:
cargo check # Check if the code can compile.
cargo build # Compile.
cargo run   # Run the executable.

cargo run builds the code if cargo build has not been invoked before or if the code has changed.

For more details, peruse the Getting Started⮳ chapter of the Rust book.

Fifth, consider adding your project to source control. If you use git, you can initialize it using the git init command and add a .gitignore file to skip the folder where cargo stores its cache and outputs:

target/

Once you have edited your code, stage and commit the changes with:

git add .
git commit

Review the git manual for more commands.

References

Related Topics

  • cargo.
  • Entrypoints.
  • Language.
  • Package layout.
  • rustup.