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If you haven’t yet used rust-analyzer, immediately go and try it out. The developer experience is much better than RLS, particularly for larger projects. One q

by sjroot 6y ago

If you haven’t yet used rust-analyzer, immediately go and try it out. The developer experience is much better than RLS, particularly for larger projects. One question I’ve had for some time: what exactly is the relationship between Ferrous Systems and the Rust core team? The most important part of this article - the call for sponsors - calls out the former, but I would think Mozilla would also be greatly motivated to sponsor this work. (If they haven’t already?)

GolDDranks 6y ago
Ferrous Systems is a private consulting company that specialises on Rust and sponsors some community projects such as Rust-Analyzer. I don't think the company has any "official" relationship with Rust governance. However, Florian Gilcher and Aleksey Kladov who both work at Ferrous Systems are active community members and also members in some Rust teams. It's generally thought in the Rust community that the community benefits from diversifying the pool of stakeholders and also commercial players. Rust doesn't want to identify too hard as "Mozilla's language". Edit: Forgot to mention: There isn't currently any legal body such as "Rust foundation" so it's hard for the Rust project itself financially sponsor this kind of project. It's mostly either Mozilla or then some "third party" player.
- eminence32 6y ago
  On the topic of a "Rust Foundation", there a semi-recent blog post from one of the rust core members on this: http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2020/01/09/towards-a-rust-foundation/ http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2020/01/09/towa...
muizelaar 6y ago
From https://rust-analyzer.github.io/ https://rust-analyzer.github.io/: "The following companies contributed significantly towards rust-analyzer development: Ferrous Systems, Mozilla, Embark Studios, freiheit.com".
throwaway894345 6y ago
It's hard to understate how much of a difference rust-analyzer makes. Rust is a complex language, and the compiler is very pedantic. This makes it very hard for beginners--even with lots of systems experience--to scan lengthy compiler error messages, to locate the relative line that it is complaining about (necessary for context), and to try to make sense of the error (Rust error messages are very good, but good messaging can only get you so far with respect to difficult concepts like lifetimes). This feedback loop is on the order of minutes, and it only starts when the user invokes `cargo build` or similar. Rust-analyzer dramatically shortens this feedback loop by _immediately_ highlighting errors: fewer changes since the last known good state, and it visually points you to the errant expression. For me, this (coupled with non-lexical lifetimes and error handling improvements) made the difference between "I can't justify using Rust because I can't be sufficiently productive" and "the productivity hit is sufficiently small that it makes good sense to use Rust for some of the applications I write, especially factoring in its rate of improvement".
Myrmornis 6y ago
I'm using it (with https://github.com/joaotavora/eglot https://github.com/joaotavora/eglot in Emacs) and it's fantastic. I imagine that it's evolving quite quickly, and it's also the sort of thing where it's probably both fun and fine to stay close to the bleeding edge. Should I just periodically download the latest released binary, or is it worth building from master?
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  The releases happen once a week. Building from master is really easy but at this point weekly is probably fine IMHO.
  - matklad 6y ago
    There are also nightly binary releases!
    - steveklabnik 6y ago
      Even better! :D
nikki93 6y ago
It seems good! I wanted to play with Rust WASM things but it doesn't seem to help with completion of sources from wasm-bindgen's canvas 2d context for example. :/

by sjroot 6y ago

GolDDranks 6y ago

Ferrous Systems is a private consulting company that specialises on Rust and sponsors some community projects such as Rust-Analyzer. I don't think the company has any "official" relationship with Rust governance. However, Florian Gilcher and Aleksey Kladov who both work at Ferrous Systems are active community members and also members in some Rust teams. It's generally thought in the Rust community that the community benefits from diversifying the pool of stakeholders and also commercial players. Rust doesn't want to identify too hard as "Mozilla's language". Edit: Forgot to mention: There isn't currently any legal body such as "Rust foundation" so it's hard for the Rust project itself financially sponsor this kind of project. It's mostly either Mozilla or then some "third party" player.

eminence32 6y ago
On the topic of a "Rust Foundation", there a semi-recent blog post from one of the rust core members on this: http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2020/01/09/towards-a-rust-foundation/ http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2020/01/09/towa...

muizelaar 6y ago

From https://rust-analyzer.github.io/ https://rust-analyzer.github.io/: "The following companies contributed significantly towards rust-analyzer development: Ferrous Systems, Mozilla, Embark Studios, freiheit.com".

throwaway894345 6y ago

It's hard to understate how much of a difference rust-analyzer makes. Rust is a complex language, and the compiler is very pedantic. This makes it very hard for beginners--even with lots of systems experience--to scan lengthy compiler error messages, to locate the relative line that it is complaining about (necessary for context), and to try to make sense of the error (Rust error messages are very good, but good messaging can only get you so far with respect to difficult concepts like lifetimes). This feedback loop is on the order of minutes, and it only starts when the user invokes `cargo build` or similar. Rust-analyzer dramatically shortens this feedback loop by _immediately_ highlighting errors: fewer changes since the last known good state, and it visually points you to the errant expression. For me, this (coupled with non-lexical lifetimes and error handling improvements) made the difference between "I can't justify using Rust because I can't be sufficiently productive" and "the productivity hit is sufficiently small that it makes good sense to use Rust for some of the applications I write, especially factoring in its rate of improvement".

Myrmornis 6y ago

I'm using it (with https://github.com/joaotavora/eglot https://github.com/joaotavora/eglot in Emacs) and it's fantastic. I imagine that it's evolving quite quickly, and it's also the sort of thing where it's probably both fun and fine to stay close to the bleeding edge. Should I just periodically download the latest released binary, or is it worth building from master?

steveklabnik 6y ago
The releases happen once a week. Building from master is really easy but at this point weekly is probably fine IMHO.
- matklad 6y ago
  There are also nightly binary releases!
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    Even better! :D

nikki93 6y ago

It seems good! I wanted to play with Rust WASM things but it doesn't seem to help with completion of sources from wasm-bindgen's canvas 2d context for example. :/