Get Started

Step 1 Install Rust

Follow the rustup installation instructions to install Rust. Note that the current minimum supported Rust version (msrv) in extendr is 1.65.0. This is to ensure CRAN compliance. Windows users will also need to install the GNU toolchain as it matches Rtools. This can be done via rustup in the terminal: rustup target add x86_64-pc-windows-gnu.

Step 2 Update R

We recommend using a moderately new version of R (>= 4.2). You can get that from CRAN, but we highly recommend that you use rig for this. With rig, installing R is as simple as rig add release.

Step 3 Install rextendr

The R package {rextendr} provides scaffolding for extendr projects and tools for documenting Rust functions and objects. To install the latest release version, use install.packages("rextendr"). For the latest development version, use pak::pak("extendr/rextendr"). You can then run rextendr::rust_sitrep() to check your Rust installation.

Step 4 Use rust-analyzer

This is optional, but strongly recommended. If you use Visual Studio Code (VS Code) or a similar IDE, the rust-analyzer will provide you type hinting and auto-completion suggestions. It is very helpful!