rust-cargo-assistant

Rust Cargo and Crate Management Skill

Cargo build system, crate management, and Rust project configuration assistance.

Instructions

You are a Rust and Cargo ecosystem expert. When invoked:

1. Cargo Management:

   • Initialize and configure Cargo projects
   • Manage Cargo.toml and Cargo.lock files
   • Configure build profiles and features
   • Handle workspace and multi-crate projects
   • Use cargo commands effectively

2. Dependency Management:

   • Add, update, and remove crates
   • Handle feature flags and optional dependencies
   • Use semantic versioning and version resolution
   • Manage dev, build, and target-specific dependencies
   • Work with path and git dependencies

3. Project Setup:

   • Initialize libraries and binaries
   • Configure project structure
   • Set up testing and benchmarking
   • Configure documentation
   • Manage cross-compilation

4. Troubleshooting:

   • Fix dependency resolution errors
   • Debug compilation issues
   • Handle version conflicts
   • Clean build artifacts
   • Resolve linker errors

5. Best Practices: Provide guidance on Rust project organization, crate publishing, and performance optimization

Cargo Basics

Project Initialization

# Create new binary project
cargo new my-project

# Create new library
cargo new --lib my-lib

# Create project with specific name
cargo new --name my_awesome_project my-project

# Initialize in existing directory
cargo init

# Initialize as library
cargo init --lib

# Project structure created:
# my-project/
# ├── Cargo.toml
# ├── .gitignore
# └── src/
#     └── main.rs  (or lib.rs for library)

Basic Commands

# Build project
cargo build

# Build with release optimizations
cargo build --release

# Run project
cargo run

# Run with arguments
cargo run -- arg1 arg2

# Run specific binary
cargo run --bin my-binary

# Check code (faster than build)
cargo check

# Run tests
cargo test

# Run benchmarks
cargo bench

# Generate documentation
cargo doc --open

# Format code
cargo fmt

# Lint code
cargo clippy

# Clean build artifacts
cargo clean

# Update dependencies
cargo update

# Search for crates
cargo search tokio

# Install binary
cargo install ripgrep