Cargo

Cargo is Rust’s build system and package manager. It is famous for its reliability and developer experience.

When to Use

• Rust Projects: Mandatory.
• Formatting/Linting: cargo fmt, cargo clippy.
• Testing: cargo test is built-in.

Quick Start

cargo new my-project
cd my-project
cargo run

# Cargo.toml
[dependencies]
serde = "1.0"

Core Concepts

Crates

Packages. Published to crates.io.

Cargo.lock

Ensures reproducible builds. Always commit for binaries, ignore for libraries.

Workspaces

Manage multiple packages in one repo. [workspace] in root Cargo.toml.

Best Practices (2025)

Do:

• Use cargo check: Faster than build for checking syntax during dev.
• Use clippy: Listen to the linter. It teaches you Rust.
• Use cargo-deny: Scan dependency tree for licenses and bans.

Don’t:

• Don’t bloat: Rust binaries can get huge. Use cargo-bloat to analyze size.

References

• The Cargo Book