Week 1: Rust Ecosystem (Beginner)

Overview

This week focuses on getting familiar with the Rust ecosystem before diving into coding. Understanding the tooling, community resources, and project structure will give you a solid foundation.

Day 1-2: Development Environment & Tools

Topics

• Installing Rust via rustup
• Understanding rustup’s channel system (stable/beta/nightly)
• Configuring VS Code with rust-analyzer
• Basic Cargo commands (new, init, build, run, check, test)
• Cargo.toml structure

Resources

• Official Rust Installation Guide
• VS Code Rust Setup Guide
• Rust Book Ch 1
• Rustup Guide

Use Cases

• Setup for all future Rust development
• Understanding how to manage Rust versions and toolchains
• Creating new projects efficiently
• Running and testing code during development

Day 3-4: Package Management & Project Structure

Topics

• Understanding the standard project structure
• Cargo.toml vs Cargo.lock
• Adding, updating, and removing dependencies
• Semantic versioning in Rust
• Exploring crates.io and lib.rs
• Binary vs library crates
• Basic module organization

Resources

• Cargo Book
• Crates.io
• Lib.rs (Alternative crate registry with better search)
• Package Layout Convention

Use Cases

• Managing project dependencies
• Organizing code in a maintainable way
• Publishing packages to crates.io
• Working with complex project structures

Day 5-7: Tooling & Community

Topics

• Essential Cargo extensions:
  • cargo-edit: Add/remove dependencies from command line
  • cargo-watch: Auto-rebuild on file changes
  • cargo-expand: Show expanded macros
  • cargo-outdated: Check for outdated dependencies
  • cargo-audit: Security vulnerability checking
• Code quality tools:
  • Clippy (linting)
  • Rustfmt (formatting)
• Documentation:
  • rustdoc
  • Generating and viewing docs with cargo doc --open
• Community resources:
  • Reddit r/rust
  • This Week in Rust newsletter
  • Rust users forum

Resources

• Clippy Documentation
• Rustfmt Documentation
• This Week in Rust
• Blessed.rs (Community-recommended libraries)
• Rust Users Forum

Use Cases

• Maintaining high-quality code
• Finding solutions to common problems
• Staying up-to-date with Rust developments
• Leveraging community knowledge and best practices

Exercises

1. Set up your development environment with VS Code and rust-analyzer
2. Create a new project with cargo new and explore its structure
3. Add and use a simple dependency like colored or chrono
4. Run Clippy and Rustfmt on your code
5. Generate documentation for your project with cargo doc
6. Explore crates.io to find useful libraries for common tasks

Next Steps

After completing this week, you’ll have a solid understanding of the Rust ecosystem and tooling, preparing you for the syntax and concepts in the upcoming weeks.