I have just started to evaluate and learn Rust. I have some problems, where Rust might be a good fit for a solution, but in order to get there I have to get a development environment for Rust set up.

This guide was written for macOS and aimed at using Visual Studio Code.

Start by installing the fundamental Rust toolchain via: https://rustup.rs/.

️️⚠️ Since you should never be executing anything directly in a shell from a unverified URL, do yourself a favor of inspecting the source behind the URL.

$ curl -vs https://sh.rustup.rs 2>&1 | less

Now that we have that out of the way lets install Rust.

$ curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh

Please check https://rustup.rs/ for alternative ways of installing.

The URL actually installs a tool named rustup, which is the recommended way of handling your Rust installation, rustup installs (among other things):

rustc, the Rust compiler
cargo, Rust package manager

Now that we have Rust installed, we can start working on our first application.

Initiate a Rust application with cargo. cargo is Rust's package manager, you use it for everything.

$ cargo new -bin «application»

Example:

$ cargo new —bin helloworld
     Created library `helloworld` project

The variation if you are creating a library:

$ cargo new —lib helloworldlibrary
     Created library `helloworldlibrary` project

This generates the following files:

Cargo.toml, meta data for our application/library
Cargo.lock, meta data on dependencies for our application/library
src/, our source directory

And we are ready to compile, which can be done using cargo

$ cargo build
    Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.10s

This generates the are directory named target/, with the following contents:

$ tree target/
target/
└── debug
    ├── build
    ├── deps
    │   ├── helloworld-e1702fb45f5d0052
    │   ├── helloworld-e1702fb45f5d0052.d
    │   └── helloworld-e1702fb45f5d0052.dSYM
    │       └── Contents
    │           ├── Info.plist
    │           └── Resources
    │               └── DWARF
    │                   └── helloworld-e1702fb45f5d0052
    ├── examples
    ├── helloworld
    ├── helloworld.d
    ├── helloworld.dSYM -> deps/helloworld-e1702fb45f5d0052.dSYM
    ├── incremental
    │   └── helloworld-15v45zkxrmyrm
    │       ├── s-f52pub8bwa-1t86tbf-23d93ip4735d7
    │       │   ├── 1y16o1qfye96o7m0.o
    │       │   ├── 37u9wm6hxf6h6j0m.o
    │       │   ├── 3rngp6bm2u2q5z0y.o
    │       │   ├── 4oc10dk278mpk1vy.o
    │       │   ├── 4xq48u46a1pwiqn7.o
    │       │   ├── dep-graph.bin
    │       │   ├── oa3rad818d8sgn4.o
    │       │   ├── query-cache.bin
    │       │   └── work-products.bin
    │       └── s-f52pub8bwa-1t86tbf.lock
    └── native

This build is not optimized as indicated by the compiler and is aimed at development and debugging.

The target can be run as:

$ ./target/debug/helloworld
Hello, world!

If you want to build for release, you add the additional flag: --release

$ cargo build —release
    Finished release [optimized] target(s) in 0.10s

This adds more files to target/ directory:

$ tree target/
target/
├── debug
│   ├── build
│   ├── deps
│   │   ├── helloworld-e1702fb45f5d0052
│   │   ├── helloworld-e1702fb45f5d0052.d
│   │   └── helloworld-e1702fb45f5d0052.dSYM
│   │       └── Contents
│   │           ├── Info.plist
│   │           └── Resources
│   │               └── DWARF
│   │                   └── helloworld-e1702fb45f5d0052
│   ├── examples
│   ├── helloworld
│   ├── helloworld.d
│   ├── helloworld.dSYM -> deps/helloworld-e1702fb45f5d0052.dSYM
│   ├── incremental
│   │   └── helloworld-15v45zkxrmyrm
│   │       ├── s-f52pub8bwa-1t86tbf-23d93ip4735d7
│   │       │   ├── 1y16o1qfye96o7m0.o
│   │       │   ├── 37u9wm6hxf6h6j0m.o
│   │       │   ├── 3rngp6bm2u2q5z0y.o
│   │       │   ├── 4oc10dk278mpk1vy.o
│   │       │   ├── 4xq48u46a1pwiqn7.o
│   │       │   ├── dep-graph.bin
│   │       │   ├── oa3rad818d8sgn4.o
│   │       │   ├── query-cache.bin
│   │       │   └── work-products.bin
│   │       └── s-f52pub8bwa-1t86tbf.lock
│   └── native
└── release
    ├── build
    ├── deps
    │   ├── helloworld-599221bdb1c77978
    │   └── helloworld-599221bdb1c77978.d
    ├── examples
    ├── helloworld
    ├── helloworld.d
    ├── incremental
    └── native

The above tree shows both of our targets, you can do a clean up of the target/ directory with the cargo command.

$ cargo clean

You can run the target executable, either like:

$ ./target/release/helloworld
Hello, world!

Or you can use cargo to run the executable, I could have mentioned this earlier since the same goes for the regular build, but I wanted to take things step by step.

$ cargo run
    Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.03s
     Running `target/debug/helloworld`
Hello, world!

Do not that the default is the development version, which is run. If you want to run the release version instead do:

$ cargo run --release
    Finished release [optimized] target(s) in 0.03s
     Running `target/release/helloworld`
Hello, world!

cargo run builds automatically prior to executing if changes has been saved to the src/ files.

If you use Visual Studio Code and the RLS extension for Rust. Your target/ directory is populated with even more data, see the rls/ directory. Do note that this is the target/ directory after a cargo clean and initialization from Visual Studio Code. And the set up is for the integration with Visual Studio Code via RLS (Rust Language Server).

$ tree target
target
└── rls
    └── debug
        ├── build
        ├── deps
        │   ├── helloworld-da127327fd97b6ec.d
        │   ├── helloworld-fe97a0dcc4f47622.d
        │   ├── libhelloworld-da127327fd97b6ec.rmeta
        │   └── libhelloworld-fe97a0dcc4f47622.rmeta
        ├── examples
        ├── incremental
        │   ├── helloworld-3cgahs8hwxsms
        │   │   ├── s-f5woledziu-7esk1o-3jq9t7fc4fb3p
        │   │   │   ├── dep-graph.bin
        │   │   │   ├── query-cache.bin
        │   │   │   └── work-products.bin
        │   │   └── s-f5woledziu-7esk1o.lock
        │   └── helloworld-uq5esv9yxxqk
        │       ├── s-f5wolec88s-fleft9-1dg0efqmqtyu2
        │       │   ├── dep-graph.bin
        │       │   ├── query-cache.bin
        │       │   └── work-products.bin
        │       └── s-f5wolec88s-fleft9.lock
        ├── libhelloworld-da127327fd97b6ec.d
        ├── libhelloworld-da127327fd97b6ec.rmeta
        ├── libhelloworld.d
        ├── libhelloworld.rmeta
        └── native

RLS is designed to support other front-ends (editors), so RLS is not specific to Visual Studio Code. If you would like to know more see the RLS repository.

Now you are ready to try to play around with Rust or throw some Rust at your current problem.

I now it is quite overwhelming to consume all of the guides, tutorials, articles and blogposts on Rust, just check the Rust learning resources.

Do checkout the documentation section of the main Rust site.

💡 And finally one last tip from me - when you find out what libraries you want to try out on crates.io, they often have a documentation link, which can lead you to examples etc.

This guide and some video tutorials was all that started my first "Hacktoberfest Fairytale", so what are you waiting for.

This TIL was lifted from my TIL collection.

TIL: Setting Up a Rust Development Environment

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