How To Install Rust on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Rust on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Rust, commonly known as Rust-Lang, is a system programming language that is developed by Mozilla and backed by LLVM. Rust is known for preventing program crashes, memory leaks, and data races before it is compiled into binary, thus creating a highly productive and stable programming environment

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Rust language on a Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) server.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus).
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Rust features

• Zero-cost abstractions
• Move semantics
• Guaranteed memory safety
• Threads without data races
• Trait-based generics
• Pattern matching
• Type inference
• Minimal runtime
• Efficient C bindings

Install Rust on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Step 1. It’s always a good practice to start by updating your package index. This ensures that you have access to the latest available packages and their dependencies. Open your terminal and run the following command:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

This command will fetch the latest package information from the Ubuntu repositories. If you encounter any issues during the update process, try running the command again or check your internet connection.

Step 2. Installing Required Dependencies.

Rust requires a few dependencies to be installed before you can proceed with the installation. Run the following command to install the necessary packages:

sudo apt install build-essential curl git

Step 3. Installing Rust.

To install Rust, run the following in your terminal, then follow the onscreen instructions:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

To verify that Rust was successfully installed, run rustc -V. You will see output similar to:

$ rustc -V
rustc 1.22.1 (rezkia120 2017-11-17)

Step 4. Using Rust.

To use Rust, create a file called test.rs and populate it with the following lines of code:

fn test() {
 println!("You have successfully installed rust!");
}

Now run rustc test.rs. You will see an executable file called main in the same directory. Execute it by running ./test. The text “You have successfully installed Rust!” will appear on your screen.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Rust. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest stable version of Rust language on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS  (Xenial Xerus) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Rust website.