Rust

Build Commands

Compile Rust programs with Cargo's build system. Learn debug vs release builds, incremental compilation, cross-compilation, and build optimization for production binaries.

8 commands

Pro Tips

Use 'cargo build --release' for production. Release mode enables optimizations making binaries 10-100x faster.

Use 'cargo run -- args' to compile and run in one step. Arguments after '--' are passed to your program.

Install 'sccache' and set RUSTC_WRAPPER=sccache for dramatically faster rebuilds across projects.

Common Mistakes

Debug builds are significantly slower than release. Always benchmark with '--release' to get accurate performance numbers.

First build downloads and compiles all dependencies. The target/ directory can grow to several GB.

Commands

Build debug

$ cargo build

Compile project in debug mode.

Build release

$ cargo build --release

Build optimized release binary.

Check without building

$ cargo check

Check for errors without producing binary (faster).

Run project

$ cargo run

Build and run the binary.

Run with features

$ cargo run --features feature1,feature2

Run with specific feature flags.

Build for target

$ cargo build --target x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu

Cross-compile for specific target.

Build WASM

$ cargo build --target wasm32-unknown-unknown

Compile to WebAssembly.

Build all features

$ cargo build --all-features

Build with all optional features enabled.