A few weeks ago I introduced Ruststudio, a free IDE for Rust that is itself written in Rust. Version 0.1.3 is out. It is a small release on purpose, so this post covers what changed, a tour of what the IDE does today, and the directions I am thinking about. Where something is an idea and not shipped, I say so.

What is new in 0.1.3

1. Sign-up and sign-in happen inside the app.
Ruststudio is free. After the first week it asks you to sign up, and before 0.1.3 that sent you to a web page and left the app unaware that you had finished. Now a form opens in the window. You enter your details, get a six-digit code by e-mail, type it in, and that copy is linked to your account straight away. There is no password to create. The free-week dialog, the account button and Help > Sign Up / Account all use the same form.

2. Sign out, when you are signed in.
Once your copy is linked, the account menu shows My account and Sign out, not Sign up and Sign in. Sign out asks first, tells the server to unlink this install, and only then clears the signed-in state. If the server cannot be reached you stay signed in, so the app never says "signed out" while the next check quietly signs you back in. Your account is untouched, and you can link again whenever you like.

3. The sign-up dialog no longer flickers.
On Windows, showing a message box runs a nested message loop, and the app's poll timer kept firing inside it, so the "free week is over" dialog opened again on every tick. The fix is a guard plus a test that opens the gate and asserts exactly one dialog. If you hit the flicker in 0.1.2, that is why.

4. Linux downloads carry the version.
The Linux tarball, the .deb and the install folder now include the version number, with a .sha256 next to each, so you can keep several versions side by side and verify what you downloaded.

5. The app trusts your system certificate store.
Some company networks inspect HTTPS with their own root certificate. The update check and sign-up now use the operating system's trust store, so they work there too.

A tour of what is in the IDE today

  • Editor with rust-analyzer: diagnostics, completion, hover, go to definition, format, Find/Replace, Go to Symbol.
  • Solutions. A .rssln file lists several projects, a startup project and Debug/Release. A generated workspace Cargo.toml keeps Cargo happy, so nothing about your repository is locked in.
  • Run menu: build, run, test, clippy, doc, with a Problems panel and an integrated terminal.
  • Debugger (lldb-dap) with threads and an Immediate window, plus database connectors.
  • Templates for web (an axum back end with React, Vue, Svelte or Angular), desktop, native Android (no web view), libraries, CLIs, and samples such as a 100k-row data grid.
  • Packages in one place: crates (including rupm, a registry with revocable tokens), NuGet for native libraries, and npm, pnpm, yarn and bun for the front end.
  • Cargo Cleaner finds every target folder and cargo cache on the disk and deletes only those.
  • AI assistant that works with many providers, including local Ollama and LM Studio, using your own keys.

Possibilities I am exploring

These are not shipped. They are what I would like to build next, and I would like to hear which matter to you.

  • A running-app monitor. CPU, memory and thread count of the program you launched, next to the output panel, so you can see a leak or a runaway loop without leaving the IDE.
  • Live variable values. Refreshing the variables view at breakpoints and steps, and a light profiler view on top of it.
  • iOS next to Android. The Android template is native, with no web view. I would like iOS to be native in the same way, with build commands driven from the IDE instead of opening Xcode. That needs a Mac for the build, so it is a separate effort.
  • Older Linux support. The current .deb is built on a recent Ubuntu, so it needs a recent glibc. Building against an older one would let it install on more distributions.

Try it

Ruststudio is free for Windows, macOS and Linux and installs per user, without administrator rights. On Linux and macOS, install Rust with rustup; the Windows installer can offer to do it for you.

Download: https://www.ruststudio.org

If you try 0.1.3, tell me what is missing. The feedback button in the app goes straight to me.