New IDE for Rust: Feature Overview and First Impressions

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New IDE with Rust Support: First Look

The Rust ecosystem continues to evolve rapidly, and here comes another important event: a new specialized integrated development environment (IDE) has appeared on the market — RustLens. The project, currently in beta status, has already attracted the community's attention thanks to deep integration with the compiler and unique code analysis tools. We decided to test the new product and share our first impressions.

What is RustLens?

RustLens is an IDE written in Rust itself using the egui framework and the Winit system backend. Unlike universal solutions like VS Code or CLion, this environment is initially tailored to the language's specifics: strict ownership system, lifetimes, and work with unsafe blocks.

Key Features

Intelligent Autocompletion (IntelliSense) — the engine analyzes not only types but also borrowing boundaries, offering only options that are correct from the borrow checker's perspective.
Built-in Debugger — support for breakpoints with stack and memory state visualization. The debugger uses LLDB and can display values in a format close to Rust structures.
Dependency Graph — visual display of the Cargo.toml tree with indication of version conflicts and outdated crates.
REPL Console — you can execute code snippets without compiling the entire project, using miri for unsafe checking.
Refactoring — automatic variable renaming taking into account shadowing and code extraction into functions with correct lifetime transfer.

First Impressions

Installation took about a minute — just download the binary (for Windows, macOS, and Linux) and specify the path to rustup. The interface is minimalist, reminiscent of Zed, but with more panels. When opening a project with 10,000 lines of code, the environment launched in 2 seconds — an excellent indicator compared to IntelliJ IDEA.

Working with lifetimes was especially pleasing: when trying to write incorrect code, the editor not only underlines the error but also offers correction options using pop-up hints. For example, for a function returning a reference, the IDE may suggest adding an explicit lifetime parameter or changing the signature to an owning type.

Comparison with Alternatives

VS Code + rust-analyzer — falls short in analysis speed for large projects and lacks a built-in debugger.
CLion + Rust Plugin — a heavyweight solution requiring a lot of RAM. RustLens runs 2-3 times faster on the same projects.
IntelliJ IDEA — good for Java/Kotlin, but offers fewer specific features for Rust.

Drawbacks and Plans

For now, RustLens does not support plugins (announced for 2025), and the built-in terminal only works in basic mode. The developers promise to add integration with wasm-pack and cargo-audit in upcoming updates.

Conclusion: RustLens is a fresh take on Rust tooling. If you are looking for a lightweight, fast, and deeply integrated environment, it's worth trying the beta version.