cargo-make VS cargo-update

cargo-make aims to be an extensive Rust-written task runner that additionally lets you define workflows to execute your tasks. You can install it using cargo install cargo-make.

You might be interested in cargo-make, which is based on TOML, or Just, which has a syntax that is vaguely inspired by Make but much less weird sigils and more suited to non-file-based tasks.

I would like to rewrite this project in Rust, but I am not so familiar with Cargo as I am with Make. Is it possible to declare these kinds of rules and targets ? Should I use a build script, a custom tool like cargo-make or something else ? What do you think ?

I use just myself, and I personally don't want projects' codebase to decide when something gets cargo installed on my system. For people who feel that's more acceptable, I'll note that cargo-make has first class support for the idea of expressing a task that depends on a cargo plugin:

Thank you for the help, created ticket #787 and #788!

https://github.com/sagiegurari/cargo-make

I ended up using it over just because it felt easier to use cross platform, and toml seemed like a right choice

cargo make is used pretty extensively in Bottlerocket OS

Cargo is a pretty robust build tool on it's own, but for that extra automated workflow oomph, I also use cargo-make

Personally, I like cargo-update

Speaking of cargo remove, see also cargo-edit [0] from which adding and removing originally came, as well as cargo-binstall [1] which installs binaries rather than compiling from source every time. The binaries are updatable with cargo-update [2].

The latter two can replace a package manager for Rust related utilities, as I often find that those in OS package repositories are often not as up to date as directly from cargo.

[0] https://github.com/killercup/cargo-edit

[1] https://github.com/cargo-bins/cargo-binstall

[2] https://github.com/nabijaczleweli/cargo-update

Would be nice if this worked with cargo-update somehow.

There is cargo install-update plugin: https://github.com/nabijaczleweli/cargo-update

I didn't find any command or package to update those packages, and given that npm has npm -g update and cargo has cargo install-update, I decided to create go-global-update for go.

rust-analyzer isn't a rust component (like rust-src, etc. which will update with rustup update), nor a cargo binary (where you could use cargo install-update - https://github.com/nabijaczleweli/cargo-update ).

I initially was interested in Rust because of performance + speed + safety, but now I have to say that cargo is a big selling point for me.

I always used to be scared of compiling software myself because I never seemed to be able to get it to work without endless headaches. Now, I generally find it easy to compile Rust programs if they aren't in my package manager, and with cargo install-update https://github.com/nabijaczleweli/cargo-update I find it easy to keep the software up to date. I have higher confidence that I can get hobbyist Rust software working, and the more Rust software I use, the more familiar I am with the ecosystem and the more comfortable I am.

If this was written in some obscure language I wasn't familiar with, I'd be less confident I would be able to run it at all, let alone keep it updated, and I may not bother even trying to install it.

So while it may take a while for some, it's already absolutely fine for me to compile my projects in a few seconds or a minute. I install all my related tooling via cargo install and update it via cargo install-update -a ( https://github.com/nabijaczleweli/cargo-update ) so I frequently/daily build different Rust projects and I'm quite ok with the compilation times.