Introduction to Rust

Rust is a systems programming language focused on three goals: safety, speed, and concurrency. It achieves these goals without having a garbage collector, making it a useful language for a number of use cases other languages aren’t as well suited for, such as embedding in other languages, programs with specific space and time requirements, and writing low-level code, like device drivers and operating systems.

Why Rust?

Choosing Rust for your next project or learning it can provide numerous benefits:

  • Memory Safety: Rust’s ownership model, coupled with its borrow checker, ensures safe memory access at all times, preventing common bugs like buffer overflows and null pointer dereferences.
  • Concurrency Without Fear: Rust’s approach to concurrency is based on the concept of ‘fearless concurrency’, allowing you to write powerful multi-threaded applications without risking common concurrency pitfalls.
  • Zero-Cost Abstractions: Rust allows you to abstract your code without a performance penalty. The abstractions you use compile to roughly the same code as if you wrote it in a lower-level language.

Installing Rust and Setting Up the Environment

Installation

To start working with Rust, you first need to install the Rust toolchain. This includes rustc, the compiler, and Cargo, the package manager and build system.

On Windows

  1. Download and install rustup by visiting https://rustup.rs/ and following the instructions for Windows.
  2. After installation, open a command prompt and type:
      rustc --version
    This command checks the installed version of Rust, confirming the installation.

On macOS and Linux

  1. Open a terminal and run the following command:
      curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
  2. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.
  3. Post-installation, verify it by executing:
      rustc --version

Setting Up Cargo

Cargo is Rust’s build system and package manager. Most Rustaceans use Cargo because it handles a lot of tasks for you such as building your code, downloading the libraries your code depends on, and building those libraries.

Creating a New Project

To create a new project with Cargo, run:

  cargo new my_project
cd my_project

This will create a new folder called my_project with a basic project structure:

  • Cargo.toml — the manifest file where you specify your dependencies and other project settings.
  • src/main.rs — the entry point of your program.

Building and Running a Project

Within your new project, you can build and run your project using:

  cargo build
cargo run

cargo build compiles your project, and cargo run builds and runs the compiled executable.

Conclusion

You’re now equipped with the basic knowledge to begin your journey into Rust programming. Up next, we’ll dive into Rust’s ownership model and explore how it contributes to the language’s safety features. Stay tuned for more!

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Last updated 04 May 2024, 04:58 UTC . history