[caymanjim]

I would have done the same thing. I know how to build software in a dozen or more languages. I've done it manually, from scratch, in all of them. I don't know Rust. I have no immediate plan to learn Rust. I vaguely know that Cargo is something in the Rust toolbox. I don't have it installed. I don't particularly want to learn anything about it. It's a whole lot easier for me to tell the LLM to figure that out.

I might learn Rust some day. At the moment, I don't need the mental clutter.

[adastra22]

Well, fyi because it is really simple: if you have rust installed, you have cargo installed too. And to run a project you type “cargo run” from the base directory. That is all.

[Retr0id]

You get a build error because the rust version you have installed is incompatible with the codebase. Now you have to install rustup and...

[caymanjim]

I don't doubt that the process is ultimately fairly easy, but it always looks easier from inside the bubble. You have to know that Cargo is part of Rust; what the best way to install it is on your system; what tooling you should use if you don't want headaches later; what to do if you don't want to or can't install system-level packages; what minimum versions of Rust and Cargo are assumed by application developers this week; what additional dependencies are required; etc.

It's my understanding that building Rust applications still requires a C toolchain, and packages are still going to be dependent on things like having the openssl dev headers/libraries installed. That's fine, that's normal for building software, but it's not as trivial as "just git-clone this Rust source repo and run one command and everything will work".

I'm certain I could get up and running quickly. I'm also certain I'd have to install a bunch of stuff and iterate past multiple roadblocks before I was actually able to build a Rust application. And finally I'm certain I could get Claude or Codex to do it all a lot faster than if I muddled through it myself for half an hour.