Rust Analyzer: Next few years

https://rust-analyzer.github.io/blog/2020/05/18/next-few-years.html

by m-sopanen • 6 years ago

155 55 6 years ago

rust-analyzer.github.io

sjroot• 6 years 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• 6 years 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• 6 years 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/towa...

muizelaar• 6 years ago

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

throwaway8943452• 6 years 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• 6 years ago

I'm using it (with 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?

steveklabnik6• 6 years ago

The releases happen once a week. Building from master is really easy but at this point weekly is probably fine IMHO.

nikki93• 6 years 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. :/

jonnypotty5• 6 years ago

If anyone uses this and can be bothered to explain what would be the insentive to move from using cargo on the command line and sublime text to this?

computerphage• 6 years ago

All three of these things have different types.

(1) cargo on the command line

(2) sublime text

(3) Rust analyzer

So the "move from" didn't really make sense to me. You wouldn't stop using cargo (rust's package manager) to use rust analyzer (a code analysis / code completion tool).

jonnypotty5• 6 years ago

So IDE backend just means analysis and completion. I assumed this would also include some gui wrap of cargo. Obviously I shouldn't assume!

pohl• 6 years ago

They’re not alternatives to each other. It depends on how nice you want your experience editing Rust within Sublime to be. You could just try it out:

https://rust-analyzer.github.io/manual.html#sublime-text-3

matklad2• 6 years ago

I‘ve written a bit about ide vs text editor here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/fcshgy/why_do_you_thi...

nindalf• 6 years ago

Quicker feedback. It'll tell you in-line the issue (if any) is with your code as soon as you save the file. cargo will tell you the same thing but it takes longer.

In addition, this provides type annotations inline and other IDE features like go-to-definition and find-usages.

jonnypotty5• 6 years ago

But slower performance. When do you want to lose time, when you're working or when you're compiling?

thomasfoster962• 6 years ago

You can use rust-analyzer from within Sublime Text: https://rust-analyzer.github.io/manual.html#sublime-text-3

If you’re using Sublime Text 3, it’s essentially an alternative to RustEnhanced[0].

[0] https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-enhanced

urschrei• 6 years ago

It's absolutely not an alternative to RustEnhanced. Sublime-LSP + Rust-Analyzer complement RustEnhanced, adding Language Server functionality. They don't conflict in any way.

Source: me, a contributor to both RustEnhanced and Sublime-LSP

jonnypotty5• 6 years ago

OK thanks I'll try it, yeah am using rust enhanced atm.

estebank2• 6 years ago

The cargo/rustc output is optimized for the batch operation nature of cli tools, giving as good an output as possible in such an environment. rust-analyzer has the potential of showing even better output (modulo the editors' capabilities, vscode for example doesn't let you write arbitrary html in tooltips) because of the immediacy and allowing people to click on things as they explore solutions. I think that the experience is not quite there, but there's no reason it can't be as good if not better than what we have now in the cli.

Rant: In my ideal world editors would allow me to write a plugin that mimics the current cli output fairly close, with overlays and tooltips fully controlled by the plugin. Imagine clicking on the red squiggles and a pop-up with the cli output, but with syntax highlighting, editable and click to go to line.

jonnypotty5• 6 years ago

There is no doubting the power of that stuff to speed up what you're doing, but I think it also comes at a cost of understanding. I never really learnt java until I didn't have eclipse holding my hand all the time. I just wonder how much our love of shiny things leads to the Eclpise and Visual Studio problem, when we build massive amounts of software which essentially does nothing but gives users another way to do something they could have done anyway if they actually understood it. I dunno. It's complex.

amelius• 6 years ago

Is there a standard for "IDE backends", and can I plug one into my favorite editor, Vim?

asdkhadsj3• 6 years ago

I'm confused on what you're asking, isn't that exactly what the Language Server Protocol is? You can use RustAnalyzer as an LSP for Rust & Vim, I use RustAnalyzer also as the LSP for Rust & Kakoune.

bluejekyll• 6 years ago

Remember that not everyone is versed in all subjects all the time. This might be the first time they are finding out about the LSP, or it might be the first time they’ve found out the LSP works with vim. No reason to assume any of this.

https://xkcd.com/1053/

gameswithgo• 6 years ago

Yes, it uses the language server protocol: https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/

The rust-analyzer docs show how to wire it up to VIM a few different ways: https://rust-analyzer.github.io/manual.html#installation

habitue• 6 years ago

It's important to point out that rust-analyzer uses some bleeding edge features of the protocol, so sometimes certain things won't work as well in editors other than vscode. That being said, I believe the rust-analyzer author has indicated that he would fix that up to use more standard features if rust-analyzer becomes the officially recommended IDE backend.

scarmig• 6 years ago

Vim is happy to be a client for the Language Server Protocol (LSP), and more likely than not there's a language server of your choice available.

ts0000• 6 years ago

https://langserver.org/

via

https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim

and

https://github.com/fannheyward/coc-rust-analyzer

nahuel0x2• 6 years ago

Using a Prolog implementation behind Rust Analyzer is very interesting, here is the post announcing it: http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2017/01/26/lowe... and more info here: https://github.com/rust-lang/chalk

todd8• 6 years ago

My reading of the linked references indicate that the system is not using Prolog or even Horn clauses. They are using a logic inference engine, but it isn't a Prolog system.

nahuel0x2• 6 years ago

is a Prolog derivative with FOHH clauses, first post says it.

cdbattags• 6 years ago

This is the future of all systems/OS programming in my opinion.

My other goals for 2030:

- RISC-V ubiquity

- RedoxOS on all major archs

- Linux kernel maintenance shifting to at least 25% Rust code

Rust Analyzer is one of the biggest pieces that I think will get us there as far as compile times and beating out C++ ubiquity that is already in this space.

mazeltovvv• 6 years ago

If you’re on vscode it is probably not the moment to switch to rust analyzer. It doesn’t work that well compared to rls. It gets tripped up easily and stops working if your code has bugs. It also doesn’t format on save.

tyleo• 6 years ago

This has been my experience as well. I heard that rust-analyzer had superior IDE support but that does not currently seem to be true on VSCode.

steveklabnik6• 6 years ago

Interesting, for me it’s far better even today.

You both should file bugs!

weiming• 6 years ago

Anecdotally/to add a counterpoint, my experience using RA over the last few weeks has been very very positive.

throwaway8943452• 6 years ago

Mine as well.

cbdumas• 6 years ago

My experience has been very different, rust-analyzer works seamlessly in my VSCode environment, even moving from the remote WSL plugin to the remote SSH plugin. I've had zero issues with it, and it feels truly magical, when I first installed it and saw what it could do (and how fast it it) I was actually blown away. I really can't overstate how great it has been.

I can't speak to your experiences obviously, but based on mine I would recommend that anyone on VSCode gives it a shot immediately.

Diggsey• 6 years ago

Not sure what you're using - rust-analyzer does support format-on-save (in fact it's actually a VS Code built-in, rust-analyzer just exposes a formatter for Rust files that then gets used by the built-in format-on-save feature)

Also compared to RLS it works much better on code with errors in, at least in my experience.

wrs• 6 years ago

"A quick one-to-two-year hack" ... that is an impressive attitude. Respect.

Avi-D-coder3• 6 years ago

Why is GAT struck out?

steveklabnik6• 6 years ago

I read it as a joke; chalk is necessary but not sufficient for the language to gain GATs.

Avi-D-coder3• 6 years ago

What other major things are needed?

jeremysalwen• 6 years ago

We, the undersigned, petition for GATs to be un-struck out, and implemented hastily.

Rust Analyzer: Next few years

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