rust-analyzer.vs - Rust language support for Visual Studio 2022

[!IMPORTANT] I wrote this extension for my pet Rust projects. Features / fixes implemented as & when I need them. That is the entire scope of the project. But made it free & OSS just in case anyone finds it useful. Of late have been getting 'requests' from rather entitled set of users that do not have the spirit of giving back (e.g. this, this and this). If you have similar attitude, don't use this extension.

You can contribute to the project with working code OR pay me to build your fav features OR do not use this extension. Abusive, unpleasant or derogatory attitude will get you banned from this project.

Download this extension from the Visual Studio Marketplace or get the CI build.

For a superior Rust development experience install the Rust Development Pack (includes this extension along with few other useful extensions).

Principles

1. Drive developer towards Rust community best practices.
2. UI and behavior parity with 'Open Folder' experience for a C# solution with multiple projects (unless it contradicts #1).
3. Enhance with Rust community tools sets e.g. fmt, clippy, examples, docs. etc.
4. Killer features e.g. ChatGPT integration.

Features

• Workspaces & super workspaces both fully supported (super workspace is a folder with multiple cargo workspaces).
• Intellisense / Auto-complete / Goto definition / Code actions / Find references etc. all features from Rust language server.
• Build, Clean (errors in Error list with details in output window).
• Debug & Run without debugging.
• Run, debug & manage unit tests from test explorer.
• Examples support (run & debug).
• Set additional properties for build / debug / run (e.g. command line arguments).
• Clippy / Fmt integration.
• Comment (Ctrl+K Ctrl+C) & Uncomment (Ctrl+K Ctrl+U)
• Infrastructure features
  • Extension Logs for debugging in Output | rust-analyzer.vs pane.
  • Test integration requires changes currently in rust nightly toolchain. RFC is in progress to promote the changes to stable. Refer: https://
  • Tools | Options | rust-analyzer.vs

These features continue to get tested with top Rust OSS projects like cargo, ruffle, iced, geo, ruff, reqwest, wasmtime. There are bugs! 😉

Upcoming

• Cross compilation (wasm, linux, etc.) / build & run on WSL2 / leverage docker.
• Test experience enhancements (document and benchmark tests).

Probably never

• Basic project templates.
• ChatGPT integration.
• Folder enhancements (icons, context menus).
• crates.io integration.
• cargo management.

How can I help?

If you enjoy using the extension, please give it a ★★★★★ rating on the Visual Studio Marketplace.

Should you encounter bugs or if you have feature requests, head on over to the GitHub repo to open an issue if one doesn't already exist.

Pull requests are also very welcome, since I can't always get around to fixing all bugs myself.

Common links

• Open Folder extensibility is pretty much the only documentation apart from the sample code folks have written (see Acknowledgements).

Acknowledgements

• VS-RustAnalyzer for the inspiration and show how to write an 'Open Folder' extension.
• nodejstools for demonstrating good practices and utilities for writing extensions.
• madskristensen for being an immense store of extensions authoring tips, tricks & techniques.
• develop-vsextension-with-github-actions for the workflow scripts.
• vsixcookbook for the guidance and best practices.