Best IDEs and Tools for Rust Development in 2024

Overview of the best IDEs and tools for Rust development

Rust is one of the fastest-growing systems programming languages. Its main advantages are memory safety, high performance, and a modern type system. However, to unlock Rust's full potential, a developer needs the right toolset. In this article, we will review the best IDEs, code editors, and auxiliary utilities for comfortable work with Rust in 2024.

Criteria for choosing an IDE for Rust

Before moving on to the review, let's define the key requirements for a Rust development environment:

• Code autocompletion — support for rust-analyzer (official LSP server).
• Built-in debugger — integration with lldb or gdb.
• Error highlighting — real-time code analysis.
• Project management — working with Cargo (build, tests, dependencies).
• Performance — fast startup and lag-free operation.

1. Visual Studio Code — a universal choice

VS Code remains the most popular editor for Rust. It is lightweight, free, and has a huge ecosystem of extensions.

Key extensions

• rust-analyzer — autocompletion, refactoring, go to definition.
• CodeLLDB — debugging Rust code.
• crates — managing dependencies and package versions.
• Even Better TOML — syntax highlighting for Cargo.toml.

Launch configuration example

// .vscode/launch.json{    "version": "0.2.0",    "configurations": [        {            "type": "lldb",            "request": "launch",            "name": "Debug Rust",            "program": "${workspaceFolder}/target/debug/your_project",            "args": [],            "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}"        }    ]}

Pros and cons

• ✅ Free, cross-platform, huge community.
• ❌ Requires manual configuration of extensions.

2. RustRover — a specialized IDE from JetBrains

In 2023, JetBrains released RustRover — the first full-fledged IDE created exclusively for Rust. It is available in early access (EAP).

Features

• Deep integration with Cargo and rust-analyzer.
• Built-in debugger based on LLDB.
• Intelligent refactoring (rename, extract function).
• Code profiling and performance analysis.

Example of working with tests

// src/lib.rs#[cfg(test)]mod tests {    #[test]    fn it_works() {        let result = 2 + 2;        assert_eq!(result, 4);    }}

In RustRover, tests are launched with a single button next to the function.

Pros and cons

• ✅ Full Rust support "out of the box", smart refactoring.
• ❌ Paid (though EAP is free), requires more resources.

3. Helix — a next-generation terminal editor

Helix is a modern terminal editor written in Rust. It combines the speed of Vim with the convenience of an IDE.

Features

• Built-in LSP support (rust-analyzer).
• Multiple cursors and syntax tree selection.
• Minimalistic interface without plugins.

Example configuration for Rust

# ~/.config/helix/languages.toml[language-server.rust-analyzer]command = "rust-analyzer"

[[language]]name = "rust"scope = "source.rust"injection-regex = "rust"file-types = ["rs"]language-servers = ["rust-analyzer"]auto-format = true