Rust Installation and Setup Guide

1. Why Rust?

Key Features:

• Memory safety without garbage collection
• Blazingly fast performance
• Zero-cost abstractions
• Excellent tooling (Cargo, rustfmt, clippy)

2. Installing Rust

All Platforms (Recommended)

# Install rustup (Rust toolchain installer)
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

# Follow the on-screen instructions
# This installs:
# - rustc (compiler)
# - cargo (package manager)
# - rustup (toolchain manager)

Windows Specific

# 1. Download rustup-init.exe from rustup.rs
# 2. Run installer
# 3. Install Visual Studio Build Tools when prompted

3. Verify Your Installation

# Check Rust version
rustc --version
# Should return something like: rustc 1.65.0 (897e37553 2022-11-02)

# Check Cargo version
cargo --version
# cargo 1.65.0 (4bc8f24d3 2022-10-20)

# Check installation components
rustup show

4. Create Your First Project

# Create new project
cargo new hello_world
cd hello_world

# Project structure:
# hello_world/
# ├── Cargo.toml  # Project manifest
# └── src/
#     └── main.rs # Entry point

# Build and run
cargo run
# Output: Hello, world!

5. Essential Development Tools

rustfmt (Code Formatter)

# Install
rustup component add rustfmt

# Format your code
cargo fmt

clippy (Linter)

# Install
rustup component add clippy

# Run linter
cargo clippy

6. IDE Configuration

VS Code (Recommended)

1. Install rust-analyzer extension
2. Install Better TOML for Cargo.toml
3. Install CodeLLDB for debugging

Other Editors

• IntelliJ IDEA with Rust plugin
• Neovim with coc-rust-analyzer
• Emacs with lsp-mode

7. Keeping Rust Updated

# Update Rust toolchain
rustup update

# Update specific components
rustup component add rust-src  # For documentation

# Check for outdated dependencies
cargo outdated