The Rust toolchain is a collection of tools and components that streamline the development, building, and maintenance of Rust projects.
🟠 In this article, we’ll explore how to use rustup to manage Rust compiler versions and components, understand the different release channels, configure build profiles, and apply overrides for specific projects.
This practical guide will help you quickly master the essentials of the Rust toolchain and tailor it to your development needs.

    1. rustup

For those who want to start using Rust in their projects, please start here.

  • the basic Rust setup is managed by the rustup utility.
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

This will install rustup, rustc, cargo and configure $PATH.
By default, the host platform targets are installed (e.g. x86_64-pc-windows-msvc)

  • To get a list of installed toolchains and check the active one
>  rustup toolchain list
stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc (active, default)
1.74.0-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
  • Or a command that will display additional information about installed tagrets.
> rustup show

installed toolchains
--------------------
stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc (active, default)
1.74.0-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

active toolchain
----------------
name: stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
active because: it's the default toolchain
installed targets:
thumbv6m-none-eabi
wasm32-unknown-unknown
x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
  • To find the path to the toolchain
> rustup which rustc
C:\..\stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc\bin\rustc.exe

    2. Channels

  • Rust is developed in 3 parallel branches

    • stable — the most reliable, updated every 6 weeks
    • beta — a “preview” of the next stable, updated every 6 weeks
    • nightly — daily builds, including the latest (but unstable) features
    • custom — custom versions of Rust

  • To install any of the channels

    rustup toolchain install stable
    rustup toolchain install beta
    rustup toolchain install nightly
  • To update the corresponding toolchains
    rustup update stable
    rustup update beta
    rustup update nightly
  • To install the exact version
    rustup install 1.74.0-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

    3. Override & Profiling

  • Set default toolchain for the system
    rustup default nightly
  • To switch the toolchain for a specific project
    cd project-dir
    rustup override set nightly
  • Custom profiles
    In ~/.cargo/config.toml you can set profiles:
[profile.dev]
debug = true
incremental = true

[profile.release]
opt-level = 3
debug = false
lto = "fat"
panic = "abort"

    4. Components

  • Each installed toolchain can be upgraded with components
    rustup component add clippy fmt rust-src rust-analyzer
    rustup component add llvm-tools-preview
    rustup component add miri
  • To install a component in another toolchain
    rustup +nightly component add rustfmt
  • Check all installed components on the active toolchain
    rustup component list
  • Remove component from active toolchain
   rustup component remove clippy

    5. Best Practice

  • To ensure that the program runs identically on different machines, it is recommended to use the rust-toolchain.toml file.
[toolchain]
channel = "1.70.0"          # 1.70.0 v on stable channel
components = ["rust-src", "clippy", "rustfmt"]
targets = ["thumbv6m-none-eabi"]

[profile.release]
opt-level = "z"             # size optimization
lto = true                  # link-time optimization

Next time cargo build will automatically install the required toolchain, components and targets on your machine.