Your first project

This walkthrough assumes you completed Installation: a toolchain is installed, env use is set, and $RUSTY_HOME/bin is on PATH.

Scaffold a project

rusty init creates a new package. On a TTY it prompts for name, app kind, manifest format, and edition; flags skip the prompts.

rusty init demo --kind lib --format rusty --edition 2021
cd demo

Kinds: web, cli, tui, lib, fullstack, or blank.

Formats:

If you run rusty init inside a directory that already has Cargo.toml, rusty offers to migrate instead of creating a duplicate project.

Resolve and fetch

Generate or refresh the lockfile, then ingest dependencies into the content store:

rusty lock
rusty fetch

fetch resolves versions (if needed) and prepares crate sources in the CAS. Re-running it is safe — already-ingested blobs are skipped.

Build

rusty build

For rusty.json projects, rusty uses its native build driver when the project shape is supported. Otherwise it falls through to cargo with rusty-managed environment variables (CARGO_HOME, CARGO_TARGET_DIR, RUSTC_WRAPPER, etc.).

Release builds:

rusty build --release

Test

rusty test always uses the native file-test runner — it never shells out to cargo test.

rusty test
rusty test -p demo

In a workspace with multiple packages, pass -p <name> or --workspace explicitly.

Run

rusty run

Binary crates run through the same driver/cargo passthrough path as build.

Add a dependency

rusty add serde --vers ^1
rusty lock
rusty fetch

Native add works on rusty.json manifests. Cargo-format projects use cargo-compatible passthrough.

What landed on disk

See Project layout for the full tree.

Next steps

• Concepts overview — how store, layers, and workspace fit together
• Monorepo workflows — affected sets and CI test plans