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New IDE with Rust support: Introducing RustRover by JetBrains
The world of Rust development has received a significant update: JetBrains, known for its powerful development environments, has released a new specialized IDE — RustRover. This tool is designed to replace the Rust plugin for IntelliJ IDEA and offer Rust developers a full-fledged, optimized environment from the ground up. Let's explore what this new tool is and why it could become indispensable for programmers learning or already professionally using Rust.
RustRover is a standalone IDE, meaning it does not require installing other JetBrains products. It includes all the key features expected from a modern development environment, but with a focus on the specifics of the Rust language: the ownership system, lifetimes, macros, and integration with Cargo.
Key features of RustRover
At first glance, RustRover looks familiar to those who have worked with other JetBrains IDEs (e.g., PyCharm or GoLand). However, under the hood lies deep integration with the Rust ecosystem. Here are the main features we tested:
- Smart autocompletion. The IDE analyzes not only types but also the borrowing context. It suggests which methods can be called, taking mutability and lifetimes into account. This significantly speeds up writing safe code.
- Built-in Cargo support. All actions for building, testing, and managing dependencies are performed through Cargo. The interface has convenient buttons for running tests (`cargo test`), building (`cargo build`), and checking for errors using Clippy.
- Code navigation. Tools for quickly jumping to definitions, finding variable usage, and viewing type hierarchies work flawlessly. This is especially useful for large projects with complex module structures.
- Refactoring. Standard refactorings are available: rename, extract variable, change function signature. All of them respect Rust's strict typing rules.
- Debugger. The built-in debugger allows setting breakpoints, viewing variable values, and the call stack. This is critically important for understanding how memory management works in Rust.
First look at the interface and impressions
The RustRover interface is minimalist and not overloaded with unnecessary panels. The project opens instantly, and code indexing happens quickly even for medium-sized projects. We tested the IDE on a small project using popular crates (e.g., serde and tokio). Autocompletion worked correctly for all dependencies, including complex derive macros.
Special mention should be made of the built-in support for code formatting via rustfmt and the linter Clippy. The IDE automatically highlights problematic areas and suggests fixes. This is excellent help for beginners who are just learning to write idiomatic Rust code.
Is it worth switching to RustRover?
If you are an experienced Rust developer and have used IntelliJ IDEA with the plugin, then RustRover will be a logical upgrade. It offers better performance and deeper integration. For beginners who want to learn Rust, this is a great start: no need to configure VSCode with a bunch of extensions — everything works "out of the box." Currently, the IDE is in early access, but it already shows stable performance and rich functionality.
