Rust provides three distribution channels for Rust: nightly, beta, and stable. Unstable features are only available on nightly Rust. For more details on this process, see ‘Stability as a deliverable’.
To install nightly Rust, you can use rustup.sh:
$ curl -s https://static.rust-lang.org/rustup.sh | sh -s -- --channel=nightly
If you're concerned about the potential insecurity of using curl | sh, please keep reading and see our disclaimer below. And feel free to
use a two-step version of the installation and examine our installation script:
$ curl -f -L https://static.rust-lang.org/rustup.sh -O
$ sh rustup.sh --channel=nightly
If you're on Windows, please download either the 32-bit installer or the 64-bit installer and run it.
If you decide you don't want Rust anymore, we'll be a bit sad, but that's okay. Not every programming language is great for everyone. Just run the uninstall script:
$ sudo /usr/local/lib/rustlib/uninstall.sh
If you used the Windows installer, re-run the .msi and it will give you
an uninstall option.
Some people, and somewhat rightfully so, get very upset when we tell you to
curl | sh. Basically, when you do this, you are trusting that the good
people who maintain Rust aren't going to hack your computer and do bad things.
That's a good instinct! If you're one of those people, please check out the
documentation on building Rust from Source, or the official
binary downloads.
Oh, we should also mention the officially supported platforms:
We extensively test Rust on these platforms, and a few others, too, like Android. But these are the ones most likely to work, as they have the most testing.
Finally, a comment about Windows. Rust considers Windows to be a first-class platform upon release, but if we're honest, the Windows experience isn't as integrated as the Linux/OS X experience is. We're working on it! If anything does not work, it is a bug. Please let us know if that happens. Each and every commit is tested against Windows like any other platform.
If you've got Rust installed, you can open up a shell, and type this:
$ rustc --version
You should see the version number, commit hash, commit date and build date:
rustc 1.0.0-nightly (f11f3e7ba 2015-01-04) (built 2015-01-06)
If you did, Rust has been installed successfully! Congrats!
This installer also installs a copy of the documentation locally, so you can
read it offline. On UNIX systems, /usr/local/share/doc/rust is the location.
On Windows, it's in a share/doc directory, inside wherever you installed Rust
to.
If not, there are a number of places where you can get help. The easiest is the #rust IRC channel on irc.mozilla.org, which you can access through Mibbit. Click that link, and you'll be chatting with other Rustaceans (a silly nickname we call ourselves), and we can help you out. Other great resources include the user’s forum, and Stack Overflow.