It was weird for me at first, but actually Rust provides a great solution here. With https://github.com/DanielKeep/cargo-script https://github.com/DanielKeep/c

It was weird for me at first, but actually Rust provides a great solution here. With https://github.com/DanielKeep/cargo-script https://github.com/DanielKeep/cargo-script you can have single file Rust "scripts" with ecosystem dependencies. When executing the file (via the cargo-script wrapper), dependencies are fetched and a binary is compiled on demand (and cached for re-runs). It's pretty awesome for scripts where type safety is important. #!/usr/bin/env run-cargo-script //! This is a regular crate doc comment, but it also contains a partial //! Cargo manifest. Note the use of a *fenced* code block, and the //! `cargo` "language". //! //! ```cargo //! [dependencies] //! time = "0.1.25" //! ``` extern crate time; fn main() { println!("{}", time::now().rfc822z()); } Then you can just execute it with ./my-script, which will download dependencies, compile and execute.