Introduction and Installation

Overview

What makes Rust powerful:

• High Performance: Rust is built to be fast. In many cases, its performance can match—or even rival—C/C++.
• Safe Concurrency: Rust includes built-in features for handling concurrent (parallel) tasks safely, making it ideal for building large or high-performance applications.
• Memory Safety: One of Rust’s biggest strengths is how it keeps memory usage safe. This is a common problem in languages like C/C++, and Rust helps prevent these issues from the start.
• Easy-to-Maintain Code: Rust encourages clean, safe, and consistent coding practices. This helps developers write code that’s easier to manage and maintain over time.

Installation

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

• rustup (toolchain)
• rustc (compiler)
• cargo (package manager)

Verification

Rust Toolchain#

rustup check

Output

stable-aarch64-apple-darwin - Up to date : 1.91.1 (ed61e7d7e 2025-11-07)
rustup - Up to date : 1.28.2

Rust Compiler#

rustc --version

Output

rustc 1.91.1 (ed61e7d7e 2025-11-07)

Rust Package Manager#

cargo --version

Output

cargo 1.91.1 (ea2d97820 2025-10-10)

Create a New Project

cargo new YOUR_PROJECT_NAME

Output

Creating binary (application) `YOUR_PROJECT_NAME` package
note: see more `Cargo.toml` keys and their definitions at https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/manifest.html

Project contains#

Go to your project directory

cd YOUR_PROJECT_NAME

List all files and directories

.
├── .gitignore
├── Cargo.toml
└── src
    └── main.rs

Details

• Folder src contains your main file of Rust; it’s called main.rs. Similar to Golang, the function main will be the entry point for your code.
• Cargo.toml contains the details of the package and dependencies.

Running your first hello-world!#

Running in your project directory

cargo run 

Output

Compiling learn-rust v0.1.0 (/Users/ardityo.mulawarman/Developments/rust/learn-rust)
 Finished `dev` profile [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.17s
  Running `target/debug/learn-rust`
Hello, world!

When you run the cargo run command, it will execute your main.rs file, and it will generate the target folder. The target folder contains all compiled artefacts produced by Cargo.

Compile as Binary#

Compile as Debug mode#

cargo build

Output

Compiling learn-rust v0.1.0 (/Users/ardityo.mulawarman/Developments/rust/learn-rust)
  Finished `dev` profile [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.14s

Compile as Release mode#

cargo build --release

Output

Compiling learn-rust v0.1.0 (/Users/ardityo.mulawarman/Developments/rust/learn-rust)
  Finished `release` profile [optimized] target(s) in 0.20s

You will find your compiled file in the target directory, dev for debug mode and release for release mode.

Unit Test Mode#

When learning / developing Rust, using unit tests is very helpful because it allows you to test a specific function without relying on the main function. Since Rust programs normally run through main, testing individual functions directly can be inconvenient, and unit tests provide a clean way to isolate and verify each function’s behavior.

Add a new function#

fn main() {
    println!("Hello, world!");
}


#[test]
fn testing_only() {
    println!("test only");
}

Running with test mode

cargo test testing_only -- --exact --show-output 

Output

Finished `test` profile [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.00s
  Running unittests src/main.rs (target/debug/deps/learn_rust-71cb9aac0abdb009)

running 1 test
test testing_only ... ok

successes:

---- testing_only stdout ----
test only


successes:
    testing_only

test result: ok. 1 passed; 0 failed; 0 ignored; 0 measured; 0 filtered out; finished in 0.00s