How To Install Rust Programming Language In Linux

This detailed tutorial provides a concise introduction to the Rust programming language, followed by clear instructions on how to install Rust using rustup on Linux. It also guides you through updating Rust, creating and running a sample Rust program, and finally, how to uninstall Rust from your Linux system.

Introduction to Rust Programming Language

Rust, also known as rust-lang, is a modern, fast, cross-platform, and open-source systems programming language designed to replace C/C++ while offering high-level abstractions that appeal to developers familiar with C# and Java.

Rust boasts a plethora of features, including:

• Zero-cost abstractions: Rust's abstractions incur no runtime overhead, ensuring performance comparable to native code.
• Move semantics: Rust's ownership model utilizes move semantics to efficiently transfer ownership of data between variables, eliminating the need for manual memory management.
• Guaranteed memory safety: Rust's strong type system and ownership model enforce memory safety, preventing memory-related errors like dangling pointers and memory leaks.
• Threads without data races: Rust's type system and ownership model also ensure thread safety, preventing data races and ensuring consistent memory access across threads.
• Trait-based generics: Rust's generic programming capabilities are based on traits, enabling flexible and reusable code that works with a variety of data types.
• Pattern matching: Rust's pattern matching syntax allows for concise and expressive code, particularly when dealing with data structures like enums and tuples.
• Type inference: Rust's type inference system automatically deduces the types of variables and expressions, reducing the need for explicit type declarations.
• Minimal runtime: Rust's minimal runtime eliminates the overhead of garbage collection, further enhancing its performance.
• Efficient C bindings: Rust seamlessly integrates with C code, enabling interoperability with existing C libraries.

Rust is actively used in production by prominent organizations such as Canonical, Chef, Coursera, CoreOS, Dropbox, Mozilla, and NPM.

Install Rust Programming Language in Linux

The Rust language can be installed in a few different ways. The officially recommended method for installing Rust is to use Rustup, the official Rust toolchain installer.

Installing rust using rustup is quite simple. All you have to do is open your Terminal and run the following command:

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

Or,

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

Type 1 (number one) to proceed the installation with default values. Or, type 2 to customize the installation. I am going with default values, so I typed 1.

Sample output:

info: downloading installer

Welcome to Rust!

This will download and install the official compiler for the Rust
programming language, and its package manager, Cargo.

Rustup metadata and toolchains will be installed into the Rustup
home directory, located at:

  /home/ostechnix/.rustup

This can be modified with the RUSTUP_HOME environment variable.

The Cargo home directory is located at:

  /home/ostechnix/.cargo

This can be modified with the CARGO_HOME environment variable.

The cargo, rustc, rustup and other commands will be added to
Cargo's bin directory, located at:

  /home/ostechnix/.cargo/bin

This path will then be added to your PATH environment variable by
modifying the profile files located at:

  /home/ostechnix/.profile
  /home/ostechnix/.bashrc

You can uninstall at any time with rustup self uninstall and
these changes will be reverted.

Current installation options:


   default host triple: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
     default toolchain: stable (default)
               profile: default
  modify PATH variable: yes

1) Proceed with standard installation (default - just press enter)
2) Customize installation
3) Cancel installation
>

info: profile set to 'default'
info: default host triple is x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
info: syncing channel updates for 'stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu'
info: latest update on 2024-09-05, rust version 1.81.0 (eeb90cda1 2024-09-04)
info: downloading component 'cargo'
  8.3 MiB /   8.3 MiB (100 %)   3.9 MiB/s in  2s ETA:  0s
info: downloading component 'clippy'
info: downloading component 'rust-docs'
 15.9 MiB /  15.9 MiB (100 %)   3.8 MiB/s in  4s ETA:  0s
info: downloading component 'rust-std'
 26.8 MiB /  26.8 MiB (100 %)   3.7 MiB/s in  7s ETA:  0s
info: downloading component 'rustc'
 66.9 MiB /  66.9 MiB (100 %)   3.6 MiB/s in 18s ETA:  0s
info: downloading component 'rustfmt'
info: installing component 'cargo'
info: installing component 'clippy'
info: installing component 'rust-docs'
 15.9 MiB /  15.9 MiB (100 %)   7.3 MiB/s in  2s ETA:  0s
info: installing component 'rust-std'
 26.8 MiB /  26.8 MiB (100 %)  15.7 MiB/s in  2s ETA:  0s
info: installing component 'rustc'
 66.9 MiB /  66.9 MiB (100 %)  15.7 MiB/s in  4s ETA:  0s
info: installing component 'rustfmt'
info: default toolchain set to 'stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu'

  stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu installed - rustc 1.81.0 (eeb90cda1 2024-09-04)


Rust is installed now. Great!

To get started you may need to restart your current shell.
This would reload your PATH environment variable to include
Cargo's bin directory ($HOME/.cargo/bin).

To configure your current shell, you need to source
the corresponding env file under $HOME/.cargo.

This is usually done by running one of the following (note the leading DOT):
. "$HOME/.cargo/env"            # For sh/bash/zsh/ash/dash/pdksh
source "$HOME/.cargo/env.fish"  # For fish

As seen in the output above, the rustup installer script downloads and installs the official compiler for the Rust programming language, along with its package manager, Cargo. It also adds commands like cargo, rustc, rustup, and others to Cargo's bin directory, located at ~/.cargo/bin. Furthermore, the script modifies the profile file located at ~/.profile to add Cargo's bin directory to your PATH environment variable.

Finally, run the following command to configure your current shell:

$ source $HOME/.cargo/env

To verify the installed version, run:

$ rustc --version
rustc 1.81.0 (eeb90cda1 2024-09-04)

Alright! We have just installed the latest Rust version. Let us go ahead and see if it works by creating a sample rust program.

Create a Sample Program in Rust

Make a main project directory to put all your Rust code in. This directory works as parent directory to all our Rust programs.

For example, I am going to create a main project directory named "my_rust_projects" in my $HOME directory.

$ mkdir ~/my_rust_projects

Go to that directory:

$ cd ~/my_rust_projects

Next create a binary 'hello_world' package using Cargo as shown below.

$ cargo new hello_world

The above command will create a new directory named "hello_world" with all necessary files in it.

CD into that directory:

$ cd hello_world

Finally run hello_world program using command:

$ cargo run

This command compiles and runs your program. You should see "Hello, world!" printed in the terminal.

Sample output:

   Compiling hello_world v0.1.0 (/home/ostechnix/my_rust_projects/hello_world)
    Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.14s
     Running `target/debug/hello_world`
Hello, world!

This is the recommended way to use Cargo.

Alternatively, you can manually create the project's directory, write the code in a text file and finally compile and run it like below.

Let us create the project directory:

$ mkdir hello_world

Cd into that directory:

$ cd hello_world

Now write your first Rust program using any text or GUI editors. The rust files always ends with extension .rs.

To write a sample rust program, for example ostechnix.rs, do:

$ vi ostechnix.rs

Copy and paste the following code in it.

fn main() {
    println!("Hello, Welcome To OSTechNix blog!");
}

Press ESC key and type :wq to save and quit the file.

Next run the following command to compile the rust code.

$ rustc ostechnix.rs

The above command will create a executable rust program named ostechnix in the current directory.

$ ls
ostechnix ostechnix.rs

Finally run the Rust program with command:

$ ./ostechnix 
Hello, Welcome To OSTechNix blog!

It's working!!

Troubleshooting Rust

Sometimes you may get "error: linker cc not found" message when compiling programs with Cargo. To fix this install a C compiler like GCC as described in the following link.

• How To Fix Rust Error "linker 'cc' not found" On Linux

Enable Tab Completion

Rustup supports tab completion for popular shells such as Bash, Fish, Zsh and Powershell.

To enable Tab completion for Bash, do:

$ mkdir -p ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions

$ rustup completions bash >> ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/rustup

On Fish:

$ mkdir -p ~/.config/fish/completions

$ rustup completions fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/rustup.fish

On Zsh:

$ mkdir ~/.zfunc

Then add the following lines to your '.zshrc' file just before 'compinit':

fpath+=~/.zfunc

Now you can install the completions script using the following command:

$ rustup completions zsh > ~/.zfunc/_rustup

After enabling tab completion, you should log out and log back in to your shell session for the changes to take effect.

Update Rust

To update rust when a new version is released, run:

$ rustup update
info: syncing channel updates for 'stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu'
info: latest update on 2018-03-29, rust version 1.25.0 (84203cac6 2018-03-25)
info: downloading component 'rustc'
info: downloading component 'rust-std'
info: downloading component 'cargo'
info: downloading component 'rust-docs'
info: removing component 'rustc'
info: removing component 'rust-std'
info: removing component 'cargo'
info: removing component 'rust-docs'
info: installing component 'rustc'
info: installing component 'rust-std'
info: installing component 'cargo'
info: installing component 'rust-docs'
info: checking for self-updates

stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu updated - rustc 1.25.0 (84203cac6 2018-03-25)

This command also checks for updates to rustup and automatically installs the latest version.

If you want to manually check for updates and install the latest version of rustup without updating installed toolchains, type:

$ rustup self update

Uninstall Rust

You can uninstall rust language at any time using command:

$ rustup self uninstall

This command will delete Rust from your system, and all the above changes will be reverted.

Thanks for hacking in Rust!

This will uninstall all Rust toolchains and data, and remove $HOME/.cargo/bin 
from your PATH environment variable.

Continue? (y/N) y

info: removing rustup home
info: removing cargo home
info: removing rustup binaries
info: rustup is uninstalled

Finally, remove your Rust project's parent directory.

$ rm -fr ~/my_rust_projects

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

And, that's all for now. You know now how to install Rust using rustup , how to update it, create and run a sample rust program and finally how to remove rust from your system. Hope this was useful.

Resources:

• Rust website
• Rustup GitHub Repository