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Best free (preferably FOSS) Rust IDE for MacOS (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
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I think I'm going to start learning Rust. Can anyone suggest a good IDE to use?

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[–] 8 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

There's not going to be a rust-specific FOSS editor AFAIK (nothing like RustRover from JetBrains). However the Rust extensions are first-class experience on VS Codium, Neovim, Emacs, etc.

More importantly, unlike Java, C#, Kotlin, C++, or Python Rust doesn't benefit all that much from a language-specific IDE. There's no bulky management of a virtual environment, no make files, no maven, etc. Just a human-readable cargo.toml for your packages, an install command, and a build+run command.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    There’s no bulky management of a virtual environment, no make files, no maven, etc. Just a human-readable cargo.toml for your packages

    In your perspective, what's the difference between a cargo.toml and a requirements.txt, packages.json, pom.xml, etc? Is there any?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Vanilla cargo.toml files are more akin to a requirements.txt than any of the others, which allow you to do things like set variables or create run scripts. However, vanilla cargo.toml files have some minimal Make functionality so it’s a bit more than just project dependencies. Each of those ecosystems has a slightly different approach to handling build tooling and dependency management. Rust puts the basic build and dependencies in one file with the assumption your system has the right Rust version, which is a lot simpler than others.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    So there is fundamentally no difference between cargo and any other contemporary dependency/package manager.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Also, it's worth noting that cargo is a fairly good package manager all things considered. It has a native lock file format, unlike requirements.txt. Running code that's built with cargo typically just works with cargo build. No futzing around with special build commands for your specific build tooling like in js. I can't speak for maven since I've only used it a little bit and never used it enough to be comfortable with it... but cargo just doesn't really have many major paper cuts.

    Admittedly, cargo isn't really special - it's just a classic package manager that learned from the hindsight of its predecessors. It's all minor improvements if any. There's actually innovative build tooling out there: things like buck2, nix, etc. But those are an entirely different ball game.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Also, it’s worth noting that cargo is a fairly good package manager all things considered.

    Yes, I'm familiar with Cargo. My point was to point out the absurdity and silliness of OP's remarks on "no bulky management of a virtual environment, no make files, no maven, etc." Once Rust fundamentalista take off their rose-tinted glasses, it's clear that Cargo is just as good (or as bad) as any contemporary integrated build system.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    While part of me agrees, I will say most ecosystems have some glaring flaws in them. Python's lack of lock files in particular is something that annoys me to no end. Having to use poetry, pipenv, or whatever else people are using now to get around it sucks. Python's lack of being able to use multiple versions of the same library is also a thing... but not something I've found issues with personally.

    I'm not going to say cargo is some mind blowing system cause I really don't think it's innovative, at all - but I do think it's far better than most ecosystems just due to benefits of hindsight. Having an opinionated, simple build system that does all the right things out of the box is valuable, and I can't think of any mainstream language that really hits that mark otherwise.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Well, it is standard.

    That’s probably the biggest thing to consider: you use Rust, you use Cargo. It’s unanimous.

    It’s built right into the language ecosystem, so there’s no divide, and everything’s just easily available to you.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago*

    To get to your core point; I agree python without a virtual env, just raw python, is definintely not bulky. I'd argue its much more lightweight than cargo. My comment was because sounds like OP could be new-ish to programming, and, for a number of projects (ex; Android development), going from a big IDE to just a plaintext editor + command line commands can be a really painful jump. I remeber a Java course having a series of IDE tutorials and I could not for the life of me figure out the plaintext+commandline equivlent. The same can happen for certain python projects if a tutorial expects the editor to set the PYTHONPATH and the project has a venv, and the tutorial expects the editor's terminals start already-inside python virtual environment. That kind of stuff can make 'python without an IDE" confusing and daunting to someone merely following PyCharm tutorials.

    I just wanted to assure OP they likely wouldn't have that kind of experince with Rust. AFAIK Rust tutorials rarely (if ever) assume an IDE.

    Being not-bulky isn't a rust specific thing, a half-decent package manager meets the qualitification, but OP was asking about Rust and might not know.

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