Non-Cargo Based Projects

rust-analyzer does not require Cargo. However, if you use some other build system, you’ll have to describe the structure of your project for rust-analyzer in the rust-project.json format:

interface JsonProject {
    /// Path to the sysroot directory.
    ///
    /// The sysroot is where rustc looks for the
    /// crates that are built-in to rust, such as
    /// std.
    ///
    /// https://doc.rust-lang.org/rustc/command-line-arguments.html#--sysroot-override-the-system-root
    ///
    /// To see the current value of sysroot, you
    /// can query rustc:
    ///
    /// ```
    /// $ rustc --print sysroot
    /// /Users/yourname/.rustup/toolchains/stable-x86_64-apple-darwin
    /// ```
    sysroot?: string;
    /// Path to the directory with *source code* of
    /// sysroot crates.
    ///
    /// By default, this is `lib/rustlib/src/rust/library`
    /// relative to the sysroot.
    ///
    /// It should point to the directory where std,
    /// core, and friends can be found:
    ///
    /// https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/tree/master/library.
    ///
    /// If provided, rust-analyzer automatically adds
    /// dependencies on sysroot crates. Conversely,
    /// if you omit this path, you can specify sysroot
    /// dependencies yourself and, for example, have
    /// several different "sysroots" in one graph of
    /// crates.
    sysroot_src?: string;
    /// The set of crates comprising the current
    /// project. Must include all transitive
    /// dependencies as well as sysroot crate (libstd,
    /// libcore and such).
    crates: Crate[];
}

interface Crate {
    /// Optional crate name used for display purposes,
    /// without affecting semantics. See the `deps`
    /// key for semantically-significant crate names.
    display_name?: string;
    /// Path to the root module of the crate.
    root_module: string;
    /// Edition of the crate.
    edition: "2015" | "2018" | "2021";
    /// Dependencies
    deps: Dep[];
    /// Should this crate be treated as a member of
    /// current "workspace".
    ///
    /// By default, inferred from the `root_module`
    /// (members are the crates which reside inside
    /// the directory opened in the editor).
    ///
    /// Set this to `false` for things like standard
    /// library and 3rd party crates to enable
    /// performance optimizations (rust-analyzer
    /// assumes that non-member crates don't change).
    is_workspace_member?: boolean;
    /// Optionally specify the (super)set of `.rs`
    /// files comprising this crate.
    ///
    /// By default, rust-analyzer assumes that only
    /// files under `root_module.parent` can belong
    /// to a crate. `include_dirs` are included
    /// recursively, unless a subdirectory is in
    /// `exclude_dirs`.
    ///
    /// Different crates can share the same `source`.
    ///
    /// If two crates share an `.rs` file in common,
    /// they *must* have the same `source`.
    /// rust-analyzer assumes that files from one
    /// source can't refer to files in another source.
    source?: {
        include_dirs: string[],
        exclude_dirs: string[],
    },
    /// The set of cfgs activated for a given crate, like
    /// `["unix", "feature=\"foo\"", "feature=\"bar\""]`.
    cfg: string[];
    /// Target triple for this Crate.
    ///
    /// Used when running `rustc --print cfg`
    /// to get target-specific cfgs.
    target?: string;
    /// Environment variables, used for
    /// the `env!` macro
    env: { [key: string]: string; },

    /// Whether the crate is a proc-macro crate.
    is_proc_macro: boolean;
    /// For proc-macro crates, path to compiled
    /// proc-macro (.so file).
    proc_macro_dylib_path?: string;
}

interface Dep {
    /// Index of a crate in the `crates` array.
    crate: number,
    /// Name as should appear in the (implicit)
    /// `extern crate name` declaration.
    name: string,
}

This format is provisional and subject to change. Specifically, the roots setup will be different eventually.

There are three ways to feed rust-project.json to rust-analyzer:

• Place rust-project.json file at the root of the project, and rust-analyzer will discover it.

• Specify "rust-analyzer.linkedProjects": [ "path/to/rust-project.json" ] in the settings (and make sure that your LSP client sends settings as a part of initialize request).

• Specify "rust-analyzer.linkedProjects": [ { "roots": […​], "crates": […​] }] inline.

Relative paths are interpreted relative to rust-project.json file location or (for inline JSON) relative to rootUri.

See https://github.com/rust-analyzer/rust-project.json-example for a small example.

You can set the RA_LOG environment variable to rust_analyzer=info to inspect how rust-analyzer handles config and project loading.

Note that calls to cargo check are disabled when using rust-project.json by default, so compilation errors and warnings will no longer be sent to your LSP client. To enable these compilation errors you will need to specify explicitly what command rust-analyzer should run to perform the checks using the rust-analyzer.check.overrideCommand configuration. As an example, the following configuration explicitly sets cargo check as the check command.

{ "rust-analyzer.check.overrideCommand": ["cargo", "check", "--message-format=json"] }

check.overrideCommand requires the command specified to output json error messages for rust-analyzer to consume. The --message-format=json flag does this for cargo check so whichever command you use must also output errors in this format. See the Configuration section for more information.