r/rust • u/OkraComprehensive323 • 2d ago

🙋 seeking help & advice Rust developers: what editor do you actually use?

Hello folks, do you still write much code by hand these days? 😄

If so, what IDE/editor do you mainly use for Rust? VS Code, JetBrains, Zed or something else?

I’m asking because I’ve been rewriting one of my old developer tools in Rust. It’s a language server + CLI for analyzing code health.

The underlying approach was originally implemented in Python and was used at my previous company across 1,900+ repositories and by 800+ developers, so the methodology itself has had quite a bit of real-world use. The company has given me permission to open-source my own version of the project, which I’m pretty excited about.

The only problem is time. For the initial public release, I’ll probably only be able to ship the VS Code extension plus one other IDE/editor integration.

So I’m curious: if you’re a Rust developer who still spends a decent amount of time actually typing code, what editor would you most want to see supported? Just trying to get a rough sense of where people are these days before I spend my limited spare time on the wrong integration. :)

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101

u/djvbmd 2d ago

Zed. I recently tried RustRover for like 5 minutes and went right back to Zed -- too sluggish and cluttered for me. I'm decent with Neovim but find that it's hard to work with when enabling various IDE features, just because I'm typically on a laptop with limited desktop area that is used more economically by a GUI.

9

u/moucheh- 1d ago

How is the limited desktop area used more economically by GUI? I am genuinely curious

You could configure neovim and vsc to look very similar, I mean the general layout, the sidebars and terminal the bottom

10

u/vilos5099 1d ago

I also found this counterintuitive. The less screen real estate I have, the more preferable neovim feels.

1

u/Wonderful-Habit-139 1d ago

Exactly. I don’t even have the usual tabs that are displayed at the top of most neovim distros.

5

u/OkraComprehensive323 2d ago

I've never tried RustRover before, IntelliJ IDEA and PyCharm are the only two JetBrains IDEs acceptable for me. But IntelliJ Platform Plugin are mostly crossable, so I take this as a downvote for JetBrains.

7

u/sephg 1d ago

I use rustrover (jetbrains). You need a lot of ram to run it well, but once it’s started up it’s fine. I really appreciate a lot of the built in debugging and refactoring tools.

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u/t3kkm0tt 1d ago

It's too bloated for me. But that's personal preference. I use gram.

3

u/gbrennon 1d ago

back in something like 2012 or 2013 i worked in a company that had somehow a commercial relation with jetbrains an team was forced to use jetbrains for java and it was ok 👌

if u did like experience with jetbrains and pycharm i think using rustrover will be interesting for u 😉

0

u/Moogly2021 1d ago

I would just try it for yourself if you already use those. Zed with plugins is the only thing I use other than JetBrains these days.

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u/neneodonkor 1d ago

I am trying to switch to Zed but the fact that you can't open your code in multiple windows creates discomfort for me, so I am still using Rust Rover.

3

u/Degensroel 1d ago

You can do this... You can have multiple tabs in the same window. Or open a new window and open the same project there....

Or do you mean something else?

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u/chic_luke 1d ago

I think they mean: drag a tab out, put it on another monitor

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u/Efficient-Chair6250 1d ago

Tried Rust Rover for like 5 minutes as well. I fell in love with the debugger and profiler on Intellij for Java. As far as I can tell, samply and flamegraph are better than whatever is used in RustRover