Installing Rust

Get Rust and Cargo running on macOS, Linux, or Windows in a couple of minutes, plus the one editor extension that makes everything easier.

6 min read•4 learning objectives

What You'll Learn

Install Rust the right way, with rustup
Verify the install and check your version
Update your toolchain with a single command
Set up an editor that actually helps you write Rust

Back in the first lesson you saw a tiny Rust program. To run something like that yourself, you need Rust on your machine — so let's fix that. It's one of the smoothest installs in programming. Give it two minutes.

Install with rustup

Skip whatever your system's package manager offers. The official, recommended way is a tool called rustup. It installs the compiler (rustc), the build tool and package manager (cargo), and it manages versions and platform targets for you. Everything else in the Rust world assumes you have it.

macOS and Linux

Open a terminal and run this:

You'll get a small menu. Pick option 1, the default install, unless you have a specific reason not to. It grabs rustup, installs the latest stable Rust, and updates your shell so the tools land on your PATH.

Windows

Download and run rustup-init.exe from rustup.rs. It's the same installer, just in graphical form. If it offers to install the Visual Studio C++ build tools, say yes — Rust needs a linker, and that's where Windows gets one.

Tempted to use Homebrew or apt instead? Don't. Those packages tend to lag behind, and you lose the thing that makes rustup worth having: painless updates, easy switching between stable/beta/nightly, and the ability to add targets for other platforms later. Every working Rust developer uses rustup — just go with it.

Check that it worked

Close your terminal and open a fresh one (so the PATH changes actually take effect), then run:

Seeing version numbers print back — something like rustc 1.83.0 and cargo 1.83.0 — means you're done. Rust is installed and ready.

Keeping it up to date

Rust ships a new stable release every six weeks, and updating is friction-free. Get in the habit of running this every now and then:

Pick an editor that helps you

You technically can write Rust in a plain text editor. You really shouldn't. The single biggest quality-of-life upgrade is rust-analyzer, the official Rust language server. It gives you inline error squiggles, autocomplete, type hints, and "jump to definition" — the stuff that makes a strict compiler feel like a helpful friend instead of a wall.

VS Code — install the rust-analyzer extension from the marketplace. This is what most of the community uses, and it just works.
JetBrains RustRover — has Rust support built in, no extra setup.
Neovim, Helix, Zed — all talk to rust-analyzer over the Language Server Protocol if a terminal-based workflow is more your speed.

Whatever you choose, get it wired up before writing any real code. It will save you from a hundred tiny frustrations — like waiting through a 30-second compile only to discover you spelled a variable name wrong, instead of seeing it underlined as you typed it.

That's the whole setup

No virtual environments, no global configuration files fighting each other, no "which version manager do I use today." Rust's tooling is genuinely one of its best features — you just got a small taste of why people say that.

Next, let's create an actual project with Cargo and see what all those generated files are for. Head over to Hello, Cargo.