How To Install Rust On Ubuntu 16.04

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In this tutorial we'll learn how to install Rust on Ubuntu 16.04.

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Overview

What is Rust? Quoting Rust website:

Rust is a system programming language that runs blazingly fast, prevent segfaults and guarantees thread safety.

Several features of Rust language:

zero-cost abstraction
move semantics
guarantted memory safety
threads without data races
trait-based generics
Pattern matching
Type inference
Minimal runtime
Efficient C bindings

In this tutorial we’ll learn how to install Rust on Ubuntu 16.04. We’ll install Rust from Ubuntu repository and also install latest stable version of Rust from Rust website.

Install Rust from Ubuntu Repository

Update repository metadata using command below

sudo apt-get update

Install rust using command below

sudo apt-get install rustc

This will install rustc and required dependencies.

[][2]

Press Y to continue.

After installation finished we can check rustc version using -V flag.

$ rustc -V
rustc 1.15.1

```bash

## Install Latest Version of Rust on Ubuntu 16.04

We already installed Rust from Ubuntu Repository, the version shipped with Ubuntu is not always the latest stable version.

To install latest stable version of Rust we can install it from Rust website using custom install script.

Run command below to install latest stable version of Rust

```bash
$ curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf <span class="token operator">|</span> sh

Since we already have Rust installed it will give us error message:

info: downloading installer
error: it looks like you have an existing installation of Rust at:
error: /usr/bin
error: rustup cannot be installed alongside Rust. Please uninstall first
error: <span class="token keyword">if</span> this is what you want, restart the installation with `-y'
error: cannot <span class="token function">install</span> <span class="token keyword">while</span> Rust is installed

```bash

The installer cannot continue since it detect a rust compiler installed on `/usr/bin`. Let's remove rust that we installed from Ubuntu repository using command below.

```bash
$ <span class="token function">sudo</span> <span class="token function">apt-get</span> -y remove rustc

Remove unused applications that was installed as rustc package dependencies.

$ <span class="token function">sudo</span> apt -y autoremove

```bash

Now let's install rust. Please note that this will install Rust on our home directory so Rust will only available for our current user and not for all users on the system.

```bash
$ curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf <span class="token operator">|</span> sh
info: downloading installer

Welcome to Rust<span class="token operator">!</span>

This will download and <span class="token function">install</span> the official compiler <span class="token keyword">for</span> the Rust programming
language, and its package manager, Cargo.

It will add the cargo, rustc, rustup and other commands to Cargo's bin
directory, located at:

  /home/ubuntu/.cargo/bin

This path will <span class="token keyword">then</span> be added to your PATH environment variable by modifying the
profile <span class="token function">file</span> located at:

  /home/ubuntu/.profile

You can uninstall at any <span class="token function">time</span> with rustup self uninstall and these changes will
be reverted.

Current installation options:

   default host triple: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
     default toolchain: stable
  modify PATH variable: <span class="token function">yes</span>

1<span class="token punctuation">)</span> Proceed with installation <span class="token punctuation">(</span>default<span class="token punctuation">)</span>
2<span class="token punctuation">)</span> Customize installation
3<span class="token punctuation">)</span> Cancel installation

Choose 1

info: syncing channel updates <span class="token keyword">for</span> <span class="token string">'stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu'</span>
info: latest update on 2017-07-20, rust version 1.19.0 <span class="token punctuation">(</span>0ade33941 2017-07-17<span class="token punctuation">)</span>
info: downloading component <span class="token string">'rustc'</span>
 37.6 MiB /  37.6 MiB <span class="token punctuation">(</span>100 %<span class="token punctuation">)</span>   5.5 MiB/s ETA:   0 s
info: downloading component <span class="token string">'rust-std'</span>
 55.6 MiB /  55.6 MiB <span class="token punctuation">(</span>100 %<span class="token punctuation">)</span>   5.4 MiB/s ETA:   0 s
info: downloading component <span class="token string">'cargo'</span>
info: downloading component <span class="token string">'rust-docs'</span>
info: installing component <span class="token string">'rustc'</span>
info: installing component <span class="token string">'rust-std'</span>
info: installing component <span class="token string">'cargo'</span>
info: installing component <span class="token string">'rust-docs'</span>
info: default toolchain <span class="token keyword">set</span> to <span class="token string">'stable'</span>

  stable installed - rustc 1.19.0 <span class="token punctuation">(</span>0ade33941 2017-07-17<span class="token punctuation">)</span>

Rust is installed now. Great<span class="token operator">!</span>

To get started you need Cargo's bin directory <span class="token punctuation">(</span><span class="token variable">$HOME</span>/.cargo/bin<span class="token punctuation">)</span> <span class="token keyword">in</span> your PATH
environment variable. Next <span class="token function">time</span> you log <span class="token keyword">in</span> this will be <span class="token keyword">done</span> automatically.

To configure your current shell run <span class="token function">source</span> <span class="token variable">$HOME</span>/.cargo/env

```bash

Latest stable version of Rust installed. At the time of this writing the latest stable versionis 1.19.0

We need to run load Cargo's bin directory located in `$HOME/.cargo/bin` to get started

```bash
$ <span class="token function">source</span> <span class="token variable">$HOME</span>/.cargo/env

Let’s check rust version installed

$ rustc -V
rustc 1.19.0 <span class="token punctuation">(</span>0ade33941 2017-07-17<span class="token punctuation">)</span>

```bash

Check where rustc installed

```bash
$ <span class="token function">which</span> rustc
/home/ubuntu/.cargo/bin/rustc

Hello Rust from Xenial

Create new file named hello.rs with contents below:

fn main<span class="token punctuation">(</span><span class="token punctuation">)</span> <span class="token punctuation">{</span>

    println<span class="token operator">!</span><span class="token punctuation">(</span><span class="token string">"Hello Rust From Xenial! - howtodojo"</span><span class="token punctuation">)</span><span class="token punctuation">;</span>
<span class="token punctuation">}</span>

```bash

Compile the source code using command below

```bash
$ rustc hello.rs

This time we will get error message similar to output below

error: could not <span class="token function">exec</span> the linker <span class="token variable"><span class="token variable">`</span>cc<span class="token variable">`</span></span><span class="token keyword">:</span> No such <span class="token function">file</span> or directory <span class="token punctuation">(</span>os error 2<span class="token punctuation">)</span>
<span class="token punctuation">..</span>.

```bash

This is because Rust doesn't have its own linker so we need to install gcc to help rust compiling code. Let's install gcc

```bash
$ <span class="token function">sudo</span> <span class="token function">apt-get</span> <span class="token function">install</span> gcc

Compile the code

$ rustc hello.rs

```bash

The result will be named hello. When we check the file type we will get it's a Linux ELF 64-bit file.

```bash
$ <span class="token function">file</span> hello
hello: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 <span class="token punctuation">(</span>SYSV<span class="token punctuation">)</span>, dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, <span class="token keyword">for</span> GNU/Linux 2.6.32, BuildID<span class="token punctuation">[</span>sha1<span class="token punctuation">]</span><span class="token operator">=</span>65a62f130512190581f42c8d7b23265072442624, not stripped

Now let’s run our first rust program

$ ./hello
Hello Rust From Xenial<span class="token operator">!</span> - howtodojo

```bash

## Summary

In this tutorial we learned how-to install Rust from Ubuntu repository. We also learned installing latest stable version of Rust using a script from Rust website.

We also created our first Hello Rust application and compile it. Have fun with Rust!

[1]: https://www.rust-lang.org/
[2]: https://www.howtodojo.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/how-to-install-rust-ubuntu-16.04-01.png

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