Rust Get Started

Installing Rust with rustup

The recommended way to install Rust is through rustup, the official toolchain installer and version manager. Rustup installs the Rust compiler (rustc), the package manager and build tool (cargo), and standard library documentation, and it makes it easy to update or switch between stable, beta, and nightly releases.

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

On Windows, you download and run rustup-init.exe from the official Rust website, which walks through the same setup, including installing the Microsoft C++ build tools if they are not already present.

Verifying the Installation

After installation completes, open a new terminal and check that both the compiler and cargo are available. This confirms rustup added them to your system PATH correctly.

rustc --version
cargo --version

Understanding Cargo

Cargo is Rust's build system and package manager, roughly equivalent to npm for JavaScript or pip combined with a build tool for Python. Almost every real Rust project is managed through cargo rather than by invoking rustc directly.

• cargo new creates a new project with a standard folder layout
• cargo build compiles the project into an executable
• cargo run compiles and immediately runs the executable
• cargo check quickly verifies the code compiles without producing a binary
• cargo test runs the project's test suite
• cargo add adds a dependency from crates.io, the Rust package registry

Creating Your First Project

Running cargo new generates a directory containing a Cargo.toml manifest file (which lists dependencies and project metadata) and a src folder with a starter main.rs file already containing a working 'Hello, world!' program.

fn main() {
    println!("Hello, world!");
}

fn greet(name: &str) {
    println!("Welcome to Rust, {}!", name);
}

fn main() {
    greet("Developer");
}

fn main() {
    let version_note = "Compiled directly with rustc, no cargo project needed";
    println!("{}", version_note);
}