Skip to content

Rust

The languages.rust module provides comprehensive support for Rust development, offering flexible toolchain management through two distinct approaches.

Getting started

To enable Rust support in your devenv.nix:

{
  languages.rust.enable = true;
}

This will provide a complete Rust development environment with rustc, cargo, clippy, rustfmt, and rust-analyzer.

Toolchain management

devenv supports two approaches for managing Rust toolchains:

1. nixpkgs channel (default)

The nixpkgs channel is easy to set up and uses the Rust version currently available in your nixpkgs revision. However, it's limited to the version in nixpkgs.

{
  languages.rust = {
    enable = true;
    channel = "nixpkgs"; # default
  };
}

2. rust-overlay channels

For more control over versions and features, use the stable, beta, or nightly channels powered by rust-overlay:

  • ✅ Access to any Rust version
  • ✅ Support for cross-compilation targets
  • ✅ Rustup-like channel selection
  • ✅ Custom profiles (minimal, default, complete)
{
  languages.rust = {
    enable = true;
    channel = "stable";
    version = "1.81.0"; # or "latest"
  };
}

Examples

Basic setup with latest stable

{
  languages.rust = {
    enable = true;
    channel = "stable";
  };
}

Nightly Rust with extra components

{
  languages.rust = {
    enable = true;
    channel = "nightly";
    components = [ "rustc" "cargo" "clippy" "rustfmt" "rust-analyzer" "miri" ];
  };
}

Cross-compilation setup

{
  languages.rust = {
    enable = true;
    channel = "stable";
    targets = [ "wasm32-unknown-unknown" "aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu" ];
  };
}

Minimal installation

{
  languages.rust = {
    enable = true;
    channel = "stable";
    profile = "minimal";
    components = [ "rustc" "cargo" ];
  };
}

Using rust-toolchain.toml

If your project uses a rust-toolchain.toml file, you can leverage it with rust-overlay:

{ config, ... }:
{
  languages.rust = {
    enable = true;
    channel = "stable";
    toolchain = config.languages.rust.rustBin.fromRustupToolchainFile ./rust-toolchain.toml;
  };
}

Example rust-toolchain.toml: 

[toolchain]
channel = "1.81.0"
components = ["rustfmt", "rust-analyzer"]
targets = ["wasm32-unknown-unknown"]
profile = "default"

Integration with other tools

Git hooks

Rust tools integrate seamlessly with git hooks:

{
  languages.rust.enable = true;

  git-hooks.hooks = {
    rustfmt.enable = true;
    clippy.enable = true;
  };
}

Options

languages.rust.enable

Whether to enable tools for Rust development.

Type: boolean

Default: false

Example: true

languages.rust.channel

The rustup toolchain to install.

nixpkgs is a special channel. It will use whichever version is currently available in nixpkgs.

Type: one of “nixpkgs”, “stable”, “beta”, “nightly”

Default: "nixpkgs"

languages.rust.components

List of Rustup components to install. Defaults to those available in nixpkgs.

Type: list of string

Default: [ "rustc" "cargo" "clippy" "rustfmt" "rust-analyzer" ]

languages.rust.mold.enable

Enable mold as the linker.

Enabled by default on x86_64 Linux machines when no cross-compilation targets are specified.

Type: boolean

Default: pkgs.stdenv.isLinux && pkgs.stdenv.isx86_64 && languages.rust.targets == [ ]

languages.rust.profile

The rustup toolchain profile to use.

Only used when languages.rust.channel is NOT set to nixpkgs.

Type: one of “default”, “minimal”, “complete”

Default: "default"

languages.rust.rustBin

Initialized rust-overlay library.

Only available when channel is not set to nixpkgs.

Type: null or anything (read only)

Default: null

languages.rust.rustflags

Extra flags to pass to the Rust compiler.

Type: string

Default: ""

languages.rust.targets

List of extra targets to install. Defaults to the native target.

Type: list of string

Default: [ ]

languages.rust.toolchain

The Rust toolchain to use.

When the channel is set to nixpkgs, the toolchain is created by symlinking the individual components from languages.rust.components.

For other channels, the toolchain is created using rust-overlay with the specified version, profile, and components.

Type: package

languages.rust.version

The version of rust to use.

Examples: latest,1.81.0, 2021-01-01.

Only used when languages.rust.channel is NOT set to nixpkgs.

Type: string

Default: "latest"