VS Code

This is the best supported editor at the moment. The rust-analyzer plugin for VS Code is maintained in tree.

You can install the latest release of the plugin from the marketplace.

Note that the plugin may cause conflicts with the previous official Rust plugin. The latter is no longer maintained and should be uninstalled.

The server binary is stored in the extension install directory, which starts with rust-lang.rust-analyzer- and is located under:

Linux: ~/.vscode/extensions
Linux (Remote, such as WSL): ~/.vscode-server/extensions
macOS: ~/.vscode/extensions
Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.vscode\extensions

As an exception, on NixOS, the extension makes a copy of the server and stores it under ~/.config/Code/User/globalStorage/rust-lang.rust-analyzer.

Note that we only support the two most recent versions of VS Code.

Updates

The extension will be updated automatically as new versions become available. It will ask your permission to download the matching language server version binary if needed.

Nightly

We ship nightly releases for VS Code. To help us out by testing the newest code, you can enable pre-release versions in the Code extension page.

Manual installation

Alternatively, download a VSIX corresponding to your platform from the releases page.

Install the extension with the Extensions: Install from VSIX command within VS Code, or from the command line via:

$ code --install-extension /path/to/rust-analyzer.vsix

If you are running an unsupported platform, you can install rust-analyzer-no-server.vsix and compile or obtain a server binary. Copy the server anywhere, then add the path to your settings.json, for example:

{ "rust-analyzer.server.path": "~/.local/bin/rust-analyzer-linux" }

Building From Source

Both the server and the Code plugin can be installed from source:

$ git clone https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-analyzer.git && cd rust-analyzer
$ cargo xtask install

You’ll need Cargo, nodejs (matching a supported version of VS Code) and npm for this.

Note that installing via xtask install does not work for VS Code Remote, instead you’ll need to install the .vsix manually.

If you’re not using Code, you can compile and install only the LSP server:

$ cargo xtask install --server

Make sure that .cargo/bin is in $PATH and precedes paths where rust-analyzer may also be installed. Specifically, rustup includes a proxy called rust-analyzer, which can cause problems if you’re planning to use a source build or even a downloaded binary.

VS Code or VSCodium in Flatpak

Setting up rust-analyzer with a Flatpak version of Code is not trivial because of the Flatpak sandbox. While the sandbox can be disabled for some directories, /usr/bin will always be mounted under /run/host/usr/bin. This prevents access to the system’s C compiler, a system-wide installation of Rust, or any other libraries you might want to link to. Some compilers and libraries can be acquired as Flatpak SDKs, such as org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.rust-stable or org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.llvm15.

If you use a Flatpak SDK for Rust, it must be in your PATH:

install the SDK extensions with flatpak install org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.{llvm15,rust-stable}//23.08
enable SDK extensions in the editor with the environment variable FLATPAK_ENABLE_SDK_EXT=llvm15,rust-stable (this can be done using flatseal or flatpak override)

If you want to use Flatpak in combination with rustup, the following steps might help:

both Rust and rustup have to be installed using https://rustup.rs. Distro packages will not work.
you need to launch Code, open a terminal and run echo $PATH
using Flatseal, you must add an environment variable called PATH. Set its value to the output from above, appending :~/.cargo/bin, where ~ is the path to your home directory. You must replace ~, as it won’t be expanded otherwise.
while Flatseal is open, you must enable access to "All user files"

A C compiler should already be available via org.freedesktop.Sdk. Any other tools or libraries you will need to acquire from Flatpak.