Rust development template

Nix flake template for Rust projects. The development shell provides cargo, rustc, clippy, rustfmt, and pkg-config. The flake builds the crate with buildRustPackage and Cargo.lock, and enables pre-commit hooks for Nix and Rust files. It is built with purr and git-hooks.nix.

This repository is part of the develop-templates collection.

Quick start

Create a project from the template:

nix flake init -t "github:nixcafe/develop-templates#rust" --refresh

To use a shorter registry name:

nix registry add beans "github:nixcafe/develop-templates"
nix flake init -t beans#rust

If you use cattery-modules, the beans registry entry already exists.

You can also create a GitHub repository from this template:

gh repo create my-rust-project --template nixcafe-develop/rust --clone

Enter the development shell:

direnv allow
cargo build

What's included

Item	Purpose
cargo, rustc	Toolchain from pkgs.rustPlatform
clippy	Rust linter
rustfmt	Rust formatter
pkg-config	Build dependency discovery
RUST_SRC_PATH	Standard library sources for rust-analyzer

RUST_SRC_PATH points to toolchain.rustLibSrc.

Customization

Change the Rust toolchain

The shell and the package build use pkgs.rustPlatform from the nixpkgs input. To use a different toolchain, replace the toolchain binding in develop/shells/default/default.nix and develop/packages/default/default.nix with another rustPlatform.

Add build inputs

The package build uses pkg-config as a native build input and openssl as a build input. Add other libraries to nativeBuildInputs or buildInputs in develop/packages/default/default.nix.

Pre-commit hooks

develop/checks/git-hooks/default.nix enables six hooks:

Hook	What it checks
nixfmt	Nix file formatting
deadnix	Dead code in Nix files
statix	Nix anti-patterns
cargo-check	Type-checks the crate
clippy	Rust lint warnings
rustfmt	Rust code formatting

The cargo-check hook runs with the package's buildInputs and nativeBuildInputs, so openssl and pkg-config are available during the check.

Dependencies

Dependency versions are recorded in Cargo.lock. The package build reads the lock file directly:

cargoLock.lockFile = ../../../Cargo.lock;

Run cargo update to update the lock file, then rebuild with nix build.

Project structure

.
├── flake.nix                          # flake entrypoint
├── Cargo.toml                         # package manifest
├── Cargo.lock                         # dependency lock file
├── .envrc                             # direnv integration (use flake)
├── .gitignore
├── src/
│   └── main.rs                        # crate entry point
└── develop/
    ├── packages/default/default.nix   # buildRustPackage derivation
    ├── shells/default/default.nix     # development shell
    └── checks/git-hooks/default.nix   # pre-commit hooks

Useful commands

direnv allow        # load the development shell
nix develop         # load the shell without direnv
cargo build         # build the crate
nix build           # build the default package
nix flake check     # run the flake checks, including the git hooks