Posts tagged "survey" | Rust Blog https://blog.rust-lang.org/tags/survey/ Empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software. Maintained by the Rust Teams. https://github.com/rust-lang/blog.rust-lang.org/ 2026-10-20T17:12:06+00:00 2026-09-07T00:00:00+00:00 2026-09-07T00:00:00+00:00 https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/09/07/rust-debugging-survey-2026-results/ <p>One of the biggest challenges Rust developers report in our <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/03/02/2025-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results/#challenges-and-wishes-about-rust">annual surveys</a> is a subpar debugging experience. So, back in February, we ran our first <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/02/23/rust-debugging-survey-2026/">Rust Debugging Survey</a>, in the hopes of identifying how Rust developers are using debuggers and what problems they are facing when doing so. We received over 2,300 responses, and we'd like to thank everyone who took the time to participate in the survey!</p> <p>In this report, we'll go over some of the results of the survey. If you'd like, you can also check out <a rel="external" href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rust-lang/surveys/main/surveys/2026/debugging/report/debugging-survey-2026-report.pdf">the complete results of the survey</a>.</p> <p>If you'd like to skip ahead to any particular section, you can do so with this index:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/09/07/rust-debugging-survey-2026-results/#who-uses-debuggers">Who Uses Debuggers?</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/09/07/rust-debugging-survey-2026-results/#how-are-debuggers-used">How Are Debuggers Used?</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/09/07/rust-debugging-survey-2026-results/#challenges">Challenges</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/09/07/rust-debugging-survey-2026-results/#debugger-visualizers">Debugger Visualizers</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/09/07/rust-debugging-survey-2026-results/#closing-remarks">Closing Remarks</a></li> </ul> <h2 id="who-uses-debuggers"><a class="anchor" href="#who-uses-debuggers" aria-hidden="true"></a> Who Uses Debuggers?</h2> <p>The first step to making sense of the survey results is understanding who took the survey. We asked respondents to rate their Rust expertise, from "Never used it" to "Advanced". Over 80% reported themselves as "Advanced" or "Intermediate", split roughly evenly between the two:</p> <!-- Chart how-would-you-rate-your-rust-expertise start --> <div> <div class id="how-would-you-rate-your-rust-expertise"><noscript> <img alt="how-would-you-rate-your-rust-expertise" src="how-would-you-rate-your-rust-expertise.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="how-would-you-rate-your-rust-expertise.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="how-would-you-rate-your-rust-expertise.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart how-would-you-rate-your-rust-expertise end --> <p>We also asked respondents if they currently use or have used debuggers in Rust. Over 46% said they currently do, with the remaining responses split between "have in the past" and "never have". That means that over half of respondents do not currently use a debugger for Rust!</p> <!-- Chart do-you-use-debuggers-in-rust start --> <div> <div class id="do-you-use-debuggers-in-rust"><noscript> <img alt="do-you-use-debuggers-in-rust" src="do-you-use-debuggers-in-rust.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="do-you-use-debuggers-in-rust.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="do-you-use-debuggers-in-rust.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart do-you-use-debuggers-in-rust end --> <p>Categorized by expertise, the responses reveal that roughly half of "beginners" have never used debuggers in Rust! On the other hand, nearly half of "advanced users" currently do use debuggers in Rust:</p> <!-- Chart do-you-use-debuggers-in-rust-per-expertise start --> <div> <div class="pie-chart" id="do-you-use-debuggers-in-rust-per-expertise"><noscript> <img alt="do-you-use-debuggers-in-rust-per-expertise" src="do-you-use-debuggers-in-rust-per-expertise.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="do-you-use-debuggers-in-rust-per-expertise.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="do-you-use-debuggers-in-rust-per-expertise.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart do-you-use-debuggers-in-rust-per-expertise end --> <p>For respondents who indicated they had previously used Rust but no longer did, we asked if challenges with debugging support were why they stopped. For nearly 3%, the answer was "yes", with an additional 24% reporting debugging issues as being partially responsible (though mind the small response count; most respondents were active users of Rust):</p> <!-- Chart were-issues-with-debugging-support-the-primary-reason-why-you-stopped-using-rust start --> <div> <div class id="were-issues-with-debugging-support-the-primary-reason-why-you-stopped-using-rust"><noscript> <img alt="were-issues-with-debugging-support-the-primary-reason-why-you-stopped-using-rust" src="were-issues-with-debugging-support-the-primary-reason-why-you-stopped-using-rust.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="were-issues-with-debugging-support-the-primary-reason-why-you-stopped-using-rust.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="were-issues-with-debugging-support-the-primary-reason-why-you-stopped-using-rust.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart were-issues-with-debugging-support-the-primary-reason-why-you-stopped-using-rust end --> <h2 id="how-are-debuggers-used"><a class="anchor" href="#how-are-debuggers-used" aria-hidden="true"></a> How Are Debuggers Used?</h2> <p>Knowing what debuggers developers are using and how is another important part of understanding the challenges they face. To this end, we asked respondents how they were debugging their programs. Unsurprisingly, most developers make use of print debugging and the <code>dbg!</code> macro. Excluding those, using <code>lldb</code> inside an IDE was the most popular choice, followed by <code>gdb</code> on the command line:</p> <!-- Chart what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs"><noscript> <img alt="what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs" src="what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs end --> <p>We can get a more detailed breakdown of these results if we include the operating system on which the respondents use a given debugging approach. We examine this from two different angles. The first angle being, "On operating system X, what percent of responses are using debugger Y?". Print debugging and the <code>dbg!</code> macro are consistently the top two yet again, but looking beyond that, things get more interesting. On Linux, using <code>gdb</code> on the command line was the most popular choice by a thin margin, beating <code>lldb</code> in an IDE by only 0.4%. On Windows, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), and macOS, <code>lldb</code> in an IDE was the top pick by at least 6%, making it a very popular choice in general. On Windows, the three least popular choices were the command line debuggers (<code>gdb</code> CLI, <code>lldb</code> CLI, and BugStalker), and on both Windows and macOS the third most popular pick was, "I don't know". Those who were debugging on operating systems not listed (Other) most frequently used some kind of special embedded debugger or <code>gdb</code>:</p> <!-- Chart what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs-per-os-1 start --> <div> <div class="pie-chart" id="what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs-per-os-1"><noscript> <img alt="what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs-per-os-1" src="what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs-per-os-1.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs-per-os-1.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs-per-os-1.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs-per-os-1 end --> <p>The other angle we can look at these responses from is, "For users of debugger X, what percent of responses are using it on operating system Y?". For most debuggers, Linux makes up the largest portion of uses, ranging from about 45% to about 77%, followed by Windows, then macOS. The most notable exceptions are WinDbg and the Visual Studio debugger, which are primarily used on Windows, and <code>lldb</code>, which is used more on macOS than Windows in an IDE and on the command line:</p> <!-- Chart what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs-per-os-2 start --> <div> <div class="pie-chart" id="what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs-per-os-2"><noscript> <img alt="what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs-per-os-2" src="what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs-per-os-2.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs-per-os-2.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs-per-os-2.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart what-tools-and-workflows-do-you-use-to-debug-rust-programs-per-os-2 end --> <p>To the 6 respondents who use WinDbg on Linux: we wish you luck!</p> <p>As for how people actually use their debugger of choice, the aggregate results are not particularly surprising. Roughly 87% of users are using debuggers for stepping line-by-line through programs and a little over half of users are using debuggers to obtain stack traces from hung/crashed processes. Only a quarter of the respondents use a debugger to debug async code. That might be partially caused by the async Rust debugging experience being clumsy and incomplete, or it could just be that users aren't writing much async code:</p> <!-- Chart what-are-you-using-debuggers-for start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="what-are-you-using-debuggers-for"><noscript> <img alt="what-are-you-using-debuggers-for" src="what-are-you-using-debuggers-for.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="what-are-you-using-debuggers-for.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-are-you-using-debuggers-for.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-are-you-using-debuggers-for-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart what-are-you-using-debuggers-for end --> <p>If we break these results down by expertise, we can learn a bit more about usage patterns. As users become more experienced with Rust, their use of debuggers for learning purposes decreases, and they get more stack traces from crashed processes:</p> <!-- Chart what-are-you-using-debuggers-for-per-expertise start --> <div> <div class="pie-chart" id="what-are-you-using-debuggers-for-per-expertise"><noscript> <img alt="what-are-you-using-debuggers-for-per-expertise" src="what-are-you-using-debuggers-for-per-expertise.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="what-are-you-using-debuggers-for-per-expertise.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-are-you-using-debuggers-for-per-expertise.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart what-are-you-using-debuggers-for-per-expertise end --> <p>The final bit of insight into how Rustaceans use debuggers is if they are debugging programs that use Rust alongside other programming languages. For 44% of respondents, the answer is "yes", which is a pretty high number!</p> <p>As for which languages those are, C dominates the scene at a little over 70%, followed by C++ at about 43% and Python at about 20%:</p> <!-- Chart do-you-debug-programs-that-combine-rust-with-any-of-the-following-languages start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="do-you-debug-programs-that-combine-rust-with-any-of-the-following-languages"><noscript> <img alt="do-you-debug-programs-that-combine-rust-with-any-of-the-following-languages" src="do-you-debug-programs-that-combine-rust-with-any-of-the-following-languages.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="do-you-debug-programs-that-combine-rust-with-any-of-the-following-languages.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="do-you-debug-programs-that-combine-rust-with-any-of-the-following-languages.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="do-you-debug-programs-that-combine-rust-with-any-of-the-following-languages-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart do-you-debug-programs-that-combine-rust-with-any-of-the-following-languages end --> <h2 id="challenges"><a class="anchor" href="#challenges" aria-hidden="true"></a> Challenges</h2> <p>Instead of diving right into asking, "what problems do you face when using debuggers?", or something to that effect, we first asked respondents why they decide against using debuggers whenever they do, including for reasons that aren't necessarily "problems with debuggers".</p> <p>The most commonly reported reason was that it was easier or faster to use logs or print debugging to solve problems, reported by a little over 81% of respondents. This could partially be explained by the open responses, which featured complaints that debuggers were too difficult to set up and/or use (especially on Windows, when dealing with Web Assembly, or in embedded contexts) and sentiment suggesting that small and/or simple problems just don't really need a debugger. It does leave one wondering if the user experience could be made convenient enough to dethrone print debugging, but it seems hard to beat something so intuitive. This is followed by roughly 37% of respondents who write code that Just Works. Fair enough. After that, about 26% of respondents indicated that they've decided not to use debuggers in situations where the language features they were working with had poor support. This is slightly more than issues with standard library types, at about 22%, which is slightly more than issues with external library types, at about 20%:</p> <!-- Chart when-you-dont-use-a-debugger-why-dont-you start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="when-you-dont-use-a-debugger-why-dont-you"><noscript> <img alt="when-you-dont-use-a-debugger-why-dont-you" src="when-you-dont-use-a-debugger-why-dont-you.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="when-you-dont-use-a-debugger-why-dont-you.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="when-you-dont-use-a-debugger-why-dont-you.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="when-you-dont-use-a-debugger-why-dont-you-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart when-you-dont-use-a-debugger-why-dont-you end --> <p>As stepping through code was anticipated to be one of the most common uses for debuggers, we directly asked respondents if they faced any issues when doing so. A little over 51% of respondents said they did! Of those who reported that they experienced issues stepping through code, we asked when they were experiencing issues. Async code was the most common case reported at slightly over 28%, followed by code involving macros at about 23%. The least common case reported was code involving function pointers, at almost 6%:</p> <!-- Chart when-do-you-experience-issues-with-trying-to-step-through-code-with-your-debugger start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="when-do-you-experience-issues-with-trying-to-step-through-code-with-your-debugger"><noscript> <img alt="when-do-you-experience-issues-with-trying-to-step-through-code-with-your-debugger" src="when-do-you-experience-issues-with-trying-to-step-through-code-with-your-debugger.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="when-do-you-experience-issues-with-trying-to-step-through-code-with-your-debugger.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="when-do-you-experience-issues-with-trying-to-step-through-code-with-your-debugger.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="when-do-you-experience-issues-with-trying-to-step-through-code-with-your-debugger-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart when-do-you-experience-issues-with-trying-to-step-through-code-with-your-debugger end --> <p>We also directly asked respondents which types in the standard library were hard to work with, if any. This was an open-response question, and reading through the responses, some particularly common complaints were with <code>enum</code>s and collections, particularly <code>std::collections::HashMap</code> and <code>std::vec::Vec</code>. This is also visible in the word cloud in the <a rel="external" href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rust-lang/surveys/main/surveys/2026/debugging/report/debugging-survey-2026-report.pdf">full report</a>.</p> <p>We asked respondents to indicate which pain points, if any, they have encountered when using debuggers with Rust. At slightly over 74%, poor representation of values was the most common pain point by a decent margin, followed by being unable to print variables at just over 55%:</p> <!-- Chart which-of-these-pain-points-have-you-experienced-using-a-debugger-with-rust start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="which-of-these-pain-points-have-you-experienced-using-a-debugger-with-rust"><noscript> <img alt="which-of-these-pain-points-have-you-experienced-using-a-debugger-with-rust" src="which-of-these-pain-points-have-you-experienced-using-a-debugger-with-rust.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="which-of-these-pain-points-have-you-experienced-using-a-debugger-with-rust.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-of-these-pain-points-have-you-experienced-using-a-debugger-with-rust.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart which-of-these-pain-points-have-you-experienced-using-a-debugger-with-rust end --> <h2 id="debugger-visualizers"><a class="anchor" href="#debugger-visualizers" aria-hidden="true"></a> Debugger Visualizers</h2> <p>We asked respondents to indicate if they were library authors, and if so, if they were aware of and using the <code>debugger_visualizer</code> attribute. Nearly 62% of respondents indicated that they were library authors who were not aware of this attribute:</p> <!-- Chart if-you-are-a-library-author-are-you-aware-of-and-using-the-debugger-visualizer-attribute start --> <div> <div class id="if-you-are-a-library-author-are-you-aware-of-and-using-the-debugger-visualizer-attribute"><noscript> <img alt="if-you-are-a-library-author-are-you-aware-of-and-using-the-debugger-visualizer-attribute" src="if-you-are-a-library-author-are-you-aware-of-and-using-the-debugger-visualizer-attribute.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="if-you-are-a-library-author-are-you-aware-of-and-using-the-debugger-visualizer-attribute.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="if-you-are-a-library-author-are-you-aware-of-and-using-the-debugger-visualizer-attribute.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart if-you-are-a-library-author-are-you-aware-of-and-using-the-debugger-visualizer-attribute end --> <p>For those who indicated that they were library authors who knew about the attribute but did not use it, we also asked why. This represented a much smaller fraction of respondents, so keep that in mind! That said, half of these library authors indicated that they didn't have the time to maintain visualizer attributes, and just under half indicated they didn't know how to write visualizer scripts:</p> <!-- Chart why-dont-you-use-the-debugger-visualizer-attribute start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="why-dont-you-use-the-debugger-visualizer-attribute"><noscript> <img alt="why-dont-you-use-the-debugger-visualizer-attribute" src="why-dont-you-use-the-debugger-visualizer-attribute.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="why-dont-you-use-the-debugger-visualizer-attribute.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="why-dont-you-use-the-debugger-visualizer-attribute.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="why-dont-you-use-the-debugger-visualizer-attribute-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart why-dont-you-use-the-debugger-visualizer-attribute end --> <p>For those of you who have been reading this section asking yourself what the <code>debugger_visualizer</code> attribute is, you can read up on it in <a rel="external" href="https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/attributes/debugger.html">The Rust Reference: Debugger Attributes</a>. The quick explanation is that the <code>debugger_visualizer</code> attribute can be applied to modules or the crate root to embed files in the debug information which improve the display of values with certain debuggers. The two currently supported file types are Natvis files, used by Microsoft debuggers such as WinDbg, and GDB "pretty printers", which are structured Python scripts used by GDB.</p> <h2 id="closing-remarks"><a class="anchor" href="#closing-remarks" aria-hidden="true"></a> Closing Remarks</h2> <p>Thanks to your participation in this survey, we've gained some great insights about how Rustaceans are using debuggers and what issues they are facing. For example, knowing that such a high number of users are dealing with poor representation of values pairs well with knowing which standard library types are causing issues, knowing that many library authors haven't heard of the <code>debugger_visualizer</code> attribute, and knowing that many of those who have but don't use it either don't know how or don't have time to maintain visualizer scripts.</p> <p>Looking to the future, the survey results have suggested that there are a few notable ways we could most significantly improve the debugging experience in Rust, such as:</p> <ul> <li>Fixing the way <code>enum</code>s are represented by debuggers so they show actual variants</li> <li>Fixing the way collections (such as <code>HashMap</code>) are represented by debuggers so they show their contents, rather than their implementation details</li> <li>Fixing the way string types (such as <code>String</code> and <code>CString</code>) are represented by debuggers so they render as text, rather than their implementation details</li> <li>Improving the <code>async</code> debugging experience, particularly with stack traces</li> <li>Improving stepping through certain state machines (such as iterators and <code>Future</code>s)</li> <li>Providing documentation on basic set up and use of some common debuggers</li> </ul> <p>A common suggestion that could resolve those first three points is to use the <code>Debug</code> implementation of types to display them in debuggers. There are challenges to that approach, such as the fact that the <code>Debug</code> implementation is not present in the final binary unless it is actually used somewhere in the program, but it isn't impossible. Notably, this is already supported by the <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/godzie44/BugStalker"><code>BugStalker</code></a> debugger (given the same condition that the <code>Debug</code> implementation must actually be used), which some of you first heard about from the survey! It also appears to have some support for <code>async</code>, with plans to expand.</p> <p>One notable way the debugger experience is currently being improved is through the <a rel="external" href="https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/programs/2026/projects/gzkF5BG0">ongoing Google Summer of Code project</a> improving how we test debug info and visualizer scripts, making it easier to maintain and improve our own visualizer scripts and general compatibility with visualizer scripts without silent breakage or regressions.</p> <p>Once again, we'd like to thank everyone who took the time to participate in the survey!</p> <!-- Chart scripts --> <script charset="utf-8" src="/scripts/plotly-basic-2.29.0.min.js"></script> <script src="charts.js"></script> Sam Kellam 2026-03-02T00:00:00+00:00 2026-03-02T00:00:00+00:00 https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/03/02/2025-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results/ <p>Hello, Rust community!</p> <p>Once again, the survey team is happy to share the results of the State of Rust survey, this year celebrating a round number - the 10th edition!</p> <p>The survey ran for 30 days (from November 17th to December, 17th 2025) and collected 7156 responses, a slight decrease in responses compared to last year. In this blog post we will shine a light on some specific key findings. As usual, the full <a rel="external" href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rust-lang/surveys/main/surveys/2025/annual-survey/report/annual-survey-2025-report.pdf">report</a> is available for download.</p> <table><thead><tr><th style="text-align: center"><strong>Survey</strong></th><th style="text-align: right"><strong>Started</strong></th><th style="text-align: right"><strong>Completed</strong></th><th style="text-align: right"><strong>Completion rate</strong></th><th style="text-align: right"><strong>Views</strong></th></tr></thead><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center">2024</td><td style="text-align: right">9 450</td><td style="text-align: right">7 310</td><td style="text-align: right">77.4%</td><td style="text-align: right">13 564</td></tr> <tr><td style="text-align: center">2025</td><td style="text-align: right">9 389</td><td style="text-align: right">7 156</td><td style="text-align: right">76.2%</td><td style="text-align: right">20 397</td></tr> </tbody></table> <p>Overall, the answers we received this year pretty closely match the results of last year, differences are often under a single percentage point. The number of respondents decreases slightly year over year. In 2025, we published multiple surveys (such as the <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/10/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025-results/">Compiler Performance</a> or <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2025/09/22/variadic-generics-micro-survey/">Variadic Generics survey</a>), which might have also contributed to less people answering this (longer) survey. We plan to discuss how (and whether) to combine the State of Rust survey with the ongoing work on the <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/12/03/lessons-learned-from-the-rust-vision-doc-process/">Rust Vision Doc</a>.</p> <p>Also to be noted that these numbers should be taken in context: we cannot extrapolate too much from a mere 7 000 answers and some optional questions have even less replies.</p> <p>Let's point out some interesting pieces of data:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/03/02/2025-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results/#screenshotting-rust-use">Screenshotting Rust use</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/03/02/2025-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results/#challenges-and-wishes-about-rust">Challenges and wishes about Rust</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/03/02/2025-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results/#learning-about-rust">Learning about Rust</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/03/02/2025-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results/#industry-and-community">Industry and community</a></li> </ul> <h2 id="screenshotting-rust-use"><a class="anchor" href="#screenshotting-rust-use" aria-hidden="true"></a> Screenshotting Rust use</h2> <p>Confirmed that people develop using the stable compiler and keep up with releases, trusting our stability and compatibility guarantees. On the other hand, people use nightly out of "necessity" (for example, something not yet stabilized). Compared to last year (<a rel="external" href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rust-lang/surveys/main/surveys/2024-annual-survey/report/annual-survey-2024-report.pdf">link</a>) we seem to have way less nightly users. This may not be a significant data point because we are looking at a sliding window of releases and differences could depend on many factors (for example, at a specific point in time we might have more downloads of the nightly compiler because of a highly anticipated feature).</p> <p>One example might be the very popular let chains and async closures features, which were stabilized last year.</p> <!-- Chart which-version-of-rust-do-you-use start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="which-version-of-rust-do-you-use"><noscript> <img alt="which-version-of-rust-do-you-use" src="which-version-of-rust-do-you-use.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="which-version-of-rust-do-you-use.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-version-of-rust-do-you-use.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-version-of-rust-do-you-use-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart which-version-of-rust-do-you-use end --> <!-- Chart what-is-the-oldest-version-of-rust-you-use start --> <div> <div class id="what-is-the-oldest-version-of-rust-you-use"><noscript> <img alt="what-is-the-oldest-version-of-rust-you-use" src="what-is-the-oldest-version-of-rust-you-use.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="what-is-the-oldest-version-of-rust-you-use.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-is-the-oldest-version-of-rust-you-use.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart what-is-the-oldest-version-of-rust-you-use end --> <p>We are also interested to hear from (and grateful to) people <em>not</em> using Rust (or not anymore) when they tell us why they dropped the language. In most cases it seems to be a "see you again in the future" rather than a "goodbye".</p> <!-- Chart do-you-use-rust start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="do-you-use-rust"><noscript> <img alt="do-you-use-rust" src="do-you-use-rust.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="do-you-use-rust.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="do-you-use-rust.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart do-you-use-rust end --> <!-- Chart why-did-you-stop-using-rust start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="why-did-you-stop-using-rust"><noscript> <img alt="why-did-you-stop-using-rust" src="why-did-you-stop-using-rust.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="why-did-you-stop-using-rust.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="why-did-you-stop-using-rust.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="why-did-you-stop-using-rust-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart why-did-you-stop-using-rust end --> <p>Some specific topic we were interested in: how often people download crates using a git repository pinned in the Cargo.toml (something like <code>foo = { git = "https://github.com/foo/bar" }</code>).</p> <!-- Chart how-do-you-download-crates start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="how-do-you-download-crates"><noscript> <img alt="how-do-you-download-crates" src="how-do-you-download-crates.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="how-do-you-download-crates.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="how-do-you-download-crates.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="how-do-you-download-crates-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart how-do-you-download-crates end --> <p>and if people actually find the output of <a rel="external" href="https://doc.rust-lang.org/rustc/command-line-arguments.html#--explain-provide-a-detailed-explanation-of-an-error-message"><code>--explain</code></a> useful. Internal discussions hinted that we were not too sure about that but this graph contradicts our prior assumption. Seems like many Rust users actually do find compiler error code explanations useful.</p> <!-- Chart do-you-use-compiler-error-codes start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="do-you-use-compiler-error-codes"><noscript> <img alt="do-you-use-compiler-error-codes" src="do-you-use-compiler-error-codes.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="do-you-use-compiler-error-codes.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="do-you-use-compiler-error-codes.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="do-you-use-compiler-error-codes-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart do-you-use-compiler-error-codes end --> <h2 id="challenges-and-wishes-about-rust"><a class="anchor" href="#challenges-and-wishes-about-rust" aria-hidden="true"></a> Challenges and wishes about Rust</h2> <p>We landed long-awaited features in 2025 (<code>let chains</code> and <code>async closures</code>) and the survey results show that they are indeed very popular and often used. That's something to celebrate! Now <code>generic const expressions</code> and <code>improved trait methods</code> are bubbling up in the charts as the most-wanted features. Most of the other desired features didn't change significantly.</p> <!-- Chart which-features-do-you-want-stabilized start --> <div> <div class="matrix-chart" id="which-features-do-you-want-stabilized"><noscript> <img alt="which-features-do-you-want-stabilized" src="which-features-do-you-want-stabilized.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="which-features-do-you-want-stabilized.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-features-do-you-want-stabilized.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-features-do-you-want-stabilized-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart which-features-do-you-want-stabilized end --> <p>When asked about which non-trivial problems people encounter, little changes overall compared to 2024: resource usage (slow compile times and storage usage) is still up there. The debugging story slipped from 2nd to 4th place (~2pp). We <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/02/23/rust-debugging-survey-2026/">just started</a> a survey to learn more about it!</p> <!-- Chart which-problems-limit-your-productivity start --> <div> <div class="matrix-chart" id="which-problems-limit-your-productivity"><noscript> <img alt="which-problems-limit-your-productivity" src="which-problems-limit-your-productivity.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="which-problems-limit-your-productivity.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-problems-limit-your-productivity.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-problems-limit-your-productivity-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart which-problems-limit-your-productivity end --> <h2 id="learning-about-rust"><a class="anchor" href="#learning-about-rust" aria-hidden="true"></a> Learning about Rust</h2> <p>Noticeable (within a ~3pp) flection in attendance for online and offline communities to learn about Rust (like meetups, discussion forums and other learning material). This hints at some people moving their questions to LLM tooling (as the word cloud for open answers suggests). Still, our online documentation is the preferred canonical reference, followed by studying the code itself.</p> <!-- Chart what-kind-of-learning-materials-have-you-consumed start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="what-kind-of-learning-materials-have-you-consumed"><noscript> <img alt="what-kind-of-learning-materials-have-you-consumed" src="what-kind-of-learning-materials-have-you-consumed.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="what-kind-of-learning-materials-have-you-consumed.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-kind-of-learning-materials-have-you-consumed.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-kind-of-learning-materials-have-you-consumed-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart what-kind-of-learning-materials-have-you-consumed end --> <!-- Chart how-often-do-you-engage-in-community-events start --> <div> <div class="matrix-chart" id="how-often-do-you-engage-in-community-events"><noscript> <img alt="how-often-do-you-engage-in-community-events" src="how-often-do-you-engage-in-community-events.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="how-often-do-you-engage-in-community-events.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="how-often-do-you-engage-in-community-events.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart how-often-do-you-engage-in-community-events end --> <h2 id="industry-and-community"><a class="anchor" href="#industry-and-community" aria-hidden="true"></a> Industry and community</h2> <p>Confirmed the hiring trend from organisations looking for more Rust developers. The steady growth may indicate a structural market presence of Rust in companies, codebases consolidate and the quantity of Rust code overall keeps increasing.</p> <!-- Chart is-your-organization-planning-on-hiring-rust-developers start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="is-your-organization-planning-on-hiring-rust-developers"><noscript> <img alt="is-your-organization-planning-on-hiring-rust-developers" src="is-your-organization-planning-on-hiring-rust-developers.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="is-your-organization-planning-on-hiring-rust-developers.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="is-your-organization-planning-on-hiring-rust-developers.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart is-your-organization-planning-on-hiring-rust-developers end --> <p>As always we try to get a picture of the concerns about the future of Rust. Given the target group we are surveying, unsurprisingly the majority of respondents would like even more Rust! But at the same time concerns persist about the language becoming more and more complex.</p> <p>Slight uptick for "developer and maintainers support". We know and we are working on it. There are ongoing efforts from RustNL (<a rel="external" href="https://rustnl.org/fund">https://rustnl.org/fund</a>) and on <a rel="external" href="https://rustfoundation.org/media/announcing-the-rust-foundation-maintainers-fund/">the Foundation side</a>. Funding efforts should focus on retaining talents that otherwise would leave after some time of unpaid labor.</p> <p>This graph is also a message to companies using Rust: please consider supporting Rust project contributors and authors of Rust crates that you use in your projects. Either by joining <a rel="external" href="https://rustfoundation.org/members/">the Rust Foundation</a>, by allowing some paid time of your employees to be spent on Rust projects you benefit from or by funding through other collect funds (like <a rel="external" href="https://opencollective.com">https://opencollective.com</a>, <a rel="external" href="https://www.thanks.dev">https://www.thanks.dev</a> and similar) or personal sponsorships (GitHub, Liberapay or similar personal donation boxes).</p> <p>Trust in the Rust Foundation is improving, which is definitively good to hear.</p> <!-- Chart what-are-your-biggest-worries-about-rust start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="what-are-your-biggest-worries-about-rust"><noscript> <img alt="what-are-your-biggest-worries-about-rust" src="what-are-your-biggest-worries-about-rust.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="what-are-your-biggest-worries-about-rust.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-are-your-biggest-worries-about-rust.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-are-your-biggest-worries-about-rust-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart what-are-your-biggest-worries-about-rust end --> <p>As a piece of trivia we ask people which tools they use when programming in Rust. The Zed editor did a remarkable jump upward in the preferences of our respondents (with Helix as a good second). Editors with agentic support are also on the rise (as the word cloud shows) and seems they are eroding the userbase of VSCode and IntelliJ, if we were to judge by the histogram.</p> <p>We're happy to meet again those 11 developers still using Atom (hey 👋!) and we salute those attached to their classic editors choice like Emacs and Vim (or derivatives).</p> <!-- Chart what-ide-do-you-use start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="what-ide-do-you-use"><noscript> <img alt="what-ide-do-you-use" src="what-ide-do-you-use.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="what-ide-do-you-use.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-ide-do-you-use.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-ide-do-you-use-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart what-ide-do-you-use end --> <p>And finally, here are some data about marginalized groups, out of all participants who completed our survey:</p> <table><thead><tr><th>Marginalized group</th><th style="text-align: right">Count</th><th style="text-align: right">Percentage</th></tr></thead><tbody> <tr><td>Lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, or otherwise non-heterosexual</td><td style="text-align: right">752</td><td style="text-align: right">10.59%</td></tr> <tr><td>Neurodivergent</td><td style="text-align: right">706</td><td style="text-align: right">9.94%</td></tr> <tr><td>Trans</td><td style="text-align: right">548</td><td style="text-align: right">7.72%</td></tr> <tr><td>Woman or perceived as a woman</td><td style="text-align: right">457</td><td style="text-align: right">6.43%</td></tr> <tr><td>Non-binary gender</td><td style="text-align: right">292</td><td style="text-align: right">4.11%</td></tr> <tr><td>Disabled (physically, mentally, or otherwise)</td><td style="text-align: right">218</td><td style="text-align: right">3.07%</td></tr> <tr><td>Racial or ethnic minority</td><td style="text-align: right">217</td><td style="text-align: right">3.06%</td></tr> <tr><td>Political beliefs</td><td style="text-align: right">211</td><td style="text-align: right">2.97%</td></tr> <tr><td>Educational background</td><td style="text-align: right">170</td><td style="text-align: right">2.39%</td></tr> <tr><td>Cultural beliefs</td><td style="text-align: right">139</td><td style="text-align: right">1.96%</td></tr> <tr><td>Language</td><td style="text-align: right">134</td><td style="text-align: right">1.89%</td></tr> <tr><td>Religious beliefs</td><td style="text-align: right">100</td><td style="text-align: right">1.41%</td></tr> <tr><td>Other</td><td style="text-align: right">61</td><td style="text-align: right">0.86%</td></tr> <tr><td>Older or younger than the average developers I know</td><td style="text-align: right">22</td><td style="text-align: right">0.31%</td></tr> </tbody></table> <p>While some of these numbers have slightly improved, this still shows that only a very small percentage of the people who are part of marginalized groups make it to our project. While we still do better than many other tech communities, it is a reminder that we need to keep working hard on being a diverse and welcoming FOSS community <em>for everyone</em>, which has always been and always will be one of our core values.</p> <h2 id="conclusions"><a class="anchor" href="#conclusions" aria-hidden="true"></a> Conclusions</h2> <p>Overall, no big surprises and a few trends confirmed.</p> <p>If you want to dig more into details, feel free to download the <a rel="external" href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rust-lang/surveys/main/surveys/2025/annual-survey/report/annual-survey-2025-report.pdf">PDF report</a>.</p> <p>We want once again to thank all the volunteers that helped shaping and translating this survey and to all the participants, who took the time to provide us a picture of the Rust community.</p> <h2 id="a-look-back"><a class="anchor" href="#a-look-back" aria-hidden="true"></a> A look back</h2> <p>Since this year we publish a round number, if you fancy a trip down the memory lane here the blog posts with the past years' survey results:</p> <ul> <li><a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/02/13/2024-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results/">2024 State of Rust Survey results</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2024/02/19/2023-Rust-Annual-Survey-2023-results/">2023 Rust Annual Survey results</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2023/08/07/Rust-Survey-2023-Results/">2022 Rust Annual Survey results</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2022/02/15/Rust-Survey-2021/">2021 Rust Survey results</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2020/12/16/rust-survey-2020/">2020 Rust Survey results</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2020/04/17/Rust-survey-2019/">2019 Rust Survey results</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2018/11/27/Rust-survey-2018/">2018 Rust Survey results</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2017/09/05/Rust-2017-Survey-Results/">2017 Rust Survey results</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2016/06/30/State-of-Rust-Survey-2016/">2016 State of Rust survey</a></li> </ul> <!-- Chart scripts --> <script charset="utf-8" src="/scripts/plotly-basic-2.29.0.min.js"></script> <script src="charts.js"></script> <!-- Chart scripts --> <script charset="utf-8" src="/scripts/plotly-basic-2.29.0.min.js"></script> <script src="charts.js"></script> The Rust Survey Team 2026-02-23T00:00:00+00:00 2026-02-23T00:00:00+00:00 https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/02/23/rust-debugging-survey-2026/ <p>We're launching a <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/rust-debugging-survey-2026">Rust Debugging Survey</a>.</p> <p>Various issues with debugging Rust code are often mentioned as one of the biggest <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/02/13/2024-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results/#challenges">challenges</a> that annoy Rust developers. While it is definitely possible to debug Rust code today, there are situations where it does not work well enough, and the quality of debugging support also varies a lot across different debuggers and operating systems.</p> <p>In order for Rust to have truly stellar debugging support, it should ideally:</p> <ul> <li>Support (several versions!) of different debuggers (such as GDB, LLDB or CDB) across multiple operating systems.</li> <li>Implement debugger visualizers that are able to produce quality presentation of most Rust types.</li> <li>Provide first-class support for debugging <code>async</code> code.</li> <li>Allow evaluating Rust expressions in the debugger.</li> </ul> <p>Rust is not quite there yet, and it will take a lot of work to reach that level of debugger support. Furthermore, it is also challenging to ensure that debugging Rust code <em>keeps</em> working well, across newly released debugger versions, changes to internal representation of Rust data structures in the standard library and other things that can break the debugging experience.</p> <p>We already have some <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/rust-lang/google-summer-of-code?tab=readme-ov-file#improve-rust-compiler-debuginfo-test-suite">plans</a> to start improving debugging support in Rust, but it would also be useful to understand the current debugging struggles of Rust developers. That is why we have prepared the <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/rust-debugging-survey-2026">Rust Debugging Survey</a>, which should help us find specific challenges with debugging Rust code.</p> <p><strong>You can fill out the survey <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/rust-debugging-survey-2026">here</a>.</strong></p> <p>Filling the survey should take you approximately 5 minutes, and the survey is fully anonymous. We will accept submissions until Friday, March 13th, 2026. After the survey ends, we will evaluate the results and post key insights on this blog.</p> <p>We would like to thank Sam Kellam (<a rel="external" href="https://github.com/hashcatHitman">@hashcatHitman</a>) who did a lot of great work to prepare this survey.</p> <p>We invite you to fill the survey, as your responses will help us improve the Rust debugging experience. Thank you!</p> Jakub Beránek 2025-11-17T00:00:00+00:00 2025-11-17T00:00:00+00:00 https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/11/17/launching-the-2025-state-of-rust-survey/ <p>It’s time for the <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/state-of-rust-2025">2025 State of Rust Survey</a>!</p> <blockquote> <p>The results of the survey can be found <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/03/02/2025-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results/">here</a>.</p> </blockquote> <p>The Rust Project has been collecting valuable information about the Rust programming language community through our annual <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/state-of-rust-2025">State of Rust Survey</a> since 2016. Which means that this year marks the tenth edition of this survey!</p> <p>We invite you to take this year’s survey whether you have just begun using Rust, you consider yourself an intermediate to advanced user, or you have not yet used Rust but intend to one day. The results will allow us to more deeply understand the global Rust community and how it evolves over time.</p> <p>Like last year, the <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/state-of-rust-2025">2025 State of Rust Survey</a> will likely take you between 10 and 25 minutes, and responses are anonymous. We will accept submissions until December 17. Trends and key insights will be shared on <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org">blog.rust-lang.org</a> as soon as possible.</p> <p><strong>We are offering the State of Rust Survey in the following languages (if you speak multiple languages, please pick one). Language options are available on the <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/state-of-rust-2025">main survey page</a>:</strong></p> <ul> <li>English</li> <li>Chinese (Simplified)</li> <li>Chinese (Traditional)</li> <li>French</li> <li>German</li> <li>Japanese</li> <li>Ukrainian</li> <li>Russian</li> <li>Spanish</li> <li>Portuguese (Brazil)</li> </ul> <blockquote> <p>Note: the non-English translations of the survey are provided in a best-effort manner. If you find any issues with the translations, we would be glad if you could send us a <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/rust-lang/surveys/tree/main/surveys/2025/annual-survey/translations">pull request</a> to improve the quality of the translations!</p> </blockquote> <p>Please help us spread the word by sharing the <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/state-of-rust-2025">survey link</a> via your social media networks, at meetups, with colleagues, and in any other community that makes sense to you.</p> <p>This survey would not be possible without the time, resources, and attention of the Rust Survey Team, the Rust Foundation, and other collaborators. We would also like to thank the following contributors who helped with translating the survey (in no particular order):</p> <ul> <li><a rel="external" href="https://github.com/jieyouxu">@jieyouxu</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://github.com/adriantombu">@adriantombu</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://github.com/llogiq">@llogiq</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://github.com/Marcono1234">@Marcono1234</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://github.com/tanakakz">@tanakakz</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://github.com/YohDeadFall">@YohDeadFall</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://github.com/Kivooeo">@Kivooeo</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://github.com/avrong">@avrong</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://github.com/igarai">@igarai</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://github.com/weihanglo">@weihanglo</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://github.com/tyranron">@tyranron</a></li> <li><a rel="external" href="https://github.com/leandrobbraga">@leandrobbraga</a></li> </ul> <p>Thank you!</p> <p>If you have any questions, please see our <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/rust-lang/surveys/blob/main/documents/Community-Survey-FAQ.md">frequently asked questions</a>.</p> <p>We appreciate your participation!</p> <p><em>Click <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/02/13/2024-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results">here</a> to read a summary of last year's survey findings.</em></p> <blockquote> <p>By the way, the Rust Survey team is looking for new members. If you like working with data and coordinating people, and would like to help us out with managing various Rust surveys, please drop by our <a rel="external" href="https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/channel/402479-t-community.2Frust-survey">Zulip channel</a> and say hi.</p> </blockquote> apiraino, Jakub Beránek 2025-09-22T00:00:00+00:00 2025-09-22T00:00:00+00:00 https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2025/09/22/variadic-generics-micro-survey/ <p>We are launching a <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/rust-variadic-generics-survey">Variadic Generics Micro Survey</a>.</p> <p>This survey is meant to gather sentiment and use-cases for upcoming design discussions for adding <a rel="external" href="https://poignardazur.github.io/2021/01/30/variadic-generics/">variadic generics</a> to the Rust language. Its main goal is to answer questions like "What do people think about variadic generics in Rust? How would people use them?". The answers will likely be used to provide more context for an upcoming RFC for variadic generics.</p> <p>The survey is only offered in the English language.</p> <p>We invite you to take this survey even if you have limited Rust experience, or you're not familiar at all with the concept of variadic generics. Every data point helps up paint a clearer picture.</p> <p><strong>You can fill out the survey <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/rust-variadic-generics-survey">here</a>.</strong></p> <p>Filling the survey should take you approximately 5 minutes, and the survey is fully anonymous. We will accept submissions until <strong>Monday, October 20th, 2025</strong>.</p> <p>Please help us spread the word by sharing the survey link via your social networks, at meetups, with colleagues, and in any other community that makes sense to you.</p> <p>Thank you!</p> Olivier Faure 2025-09-10T00:00:00+00:00 2025-09-10T00:00:00+00:00 https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/10/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025-results/ <p>Two months ago, we launched the first <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/06/16/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025">Rust Compiler Performance Survey</a>, with the goal of helping us understand the biggest pain points of Rust developers related to build performance. It is clear that this topic is very important for the Rust community, as the survey received over 3 700 responses! We would like to thank everyone who participated in the survey, and especially those who described their workflows and challenges with an open answer. We plan to run this survey annually, so that we can observe long-term trends in Rust build performance and its perception.</p> <p>In this post, we'll show some interesting results and insights that we got from the survey and promote work that we have already done recently or that we plan to do to improve the build performance of Rust code. If you would like to examine the complete results of the survey, you can find them <a rel="external" href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rust-lang/surveys/main/surveys/2025/compiler-performance-survey/report/compiler-performance-2025-report.pdf">here</a>.</p> <p>And now strap in, as there is a lot of data to explore! As this post is relatively long, here is an index of topics that it covers:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/10/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025-results/#overall-satisfaction">Overall satisfaction</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/10/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025-results/#important-workflows">Important workflows</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/10/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025-results/#incremental-rebuilds">Incremental rebuilds</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/10/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025-results/#type-checking-and-ide-performance">Type checking and IDE performance</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/10/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025-results/#clean-and-ci-builds">Clean and CI builds</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/10/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025-results/#debug-information">Debug information</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/10/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025-results/#workarounds-for-improving-build-performance">Workarounds for improving build performance</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/10/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025-results/#understanding-why-builds-are-slow">Understanding why builds are slow</a></li> </ul> <h2 id="overall-satisfaction"><a class="anchor" href="#overall-satisfaction" aria-hidden="true"></a> Overall satisfaction</h2> <p>To understand the overall sentiment, we asked our respondents to rate their satisfaction with their build performance, on a scale from 0 (worst) to 10 (best). The average rating was 6, with most people rating their experience with 7 out of 10:</p> <!-- Chart satisfaction start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="satisfaction"><noscript> <img alt="satisfaction" src="satisfaction.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="satisfaction.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="satisfaction.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart satisfaction end --> <p>To help us understand the overall build experience in more detail, we also analyzed all open answers (over a thousand of them) written by our respondents, to help us identify several recurring themes, which we will discuss in this post.</p> <p>One thing that is clear from both the satisfaction rating and the open answers is that the build experience differs wildly across users and workflows, and it is not as clear-cut as "Rust builds are slow". We actually received many positive comments about users being happy with Rust build performance, and appreciation for it being improved vastly over the past several years to the point where it stopped being a problem.</p> <p>People also liked to compare their experience with other competing technologies. For example, many people wrote that the build performance of Rust is not worse, or is even better, than what they saw with C++. On the other hand, others noted that the build performance of languages such as Go or Zig is much better than that of Rust.</p> <p>While it is great to see some developers being happy with the state we have today, it is clear that many people are not so lucky, and Rust's build performance limits their productivity. Around 45% respondents who answered that they are no longer using Rust said that at least one of the reasons why they stopped were long compile times.</p> <p>In our survey we received a lot of feedback pointing out real issues and challenges in several areas of build performance, which is what we will focus on in this post.</p> <h2 id="important-workflows"><a class="anchor" href="#important-workflows" aria-hidden="true"></a> Important workflows</h2> <p>The challenges that Rust developers experience with build performance are not always as simple as the compiler itself being slow. There are many diverse workflows with competing trade-offs, and optimizing build performance for them might require completely different solutions. Some approaches for improving build performance can also be quite unintuitive. For example, stabilizing certain language features could help remove the need for certain build scripts or proc macros, and thus speed up compilation across the Rust ecosystem. You can watch <a rel="external" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jy4HaNEJCo">this talk</a> from RustWeek about build performance to learn more.</p> <p>It is difficult to enumerate all possible build workflows, but we at least tried to ask about workflows that we assumed are common and could limit the productivity of Rust developers the most:</p> <!-- Chart limiting-workflows start --> <div> <div class="matrix-chart" id="limiting-workflows"><noscript> <img alt="limiting-workflows" src="limiting-workflows.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="limiting-workflows.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="limiting-workflows.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart limiting-workflows end --> <p>We can see that all the workflows that we asked about cause significant problems to at least a fraction of the respondents, but some of them more so than others. To gain more information about the specific problems that developers face, we also asked a more detailed, follow-up question:</p> <!-- Chart problems start --> <div> <div class="matrix-chart" id="problems"><noscript> <img alt="problems" src="problems.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="problems.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="problems.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart problems end --> <p>Based on the answers to these two questions and other experiences shared in the open answers, we identified three groups of workflows that we will discuss next:</p> <ul> <li>Incremental rebuilds after making a small change</li> <li>Type checking using <code>cargo check</code> or with a code editor</li> <li>Clean, from-scratch builds, including CI builds</li> </ul> <h3 id="incremental-rebuilds"><a class="anchor" href="#incremental-rebuilds" aria-hidden="true"></a> Incremental rebuilds</h3> <p>Waiting too long for an incremental rebuild after making a small source code change was by far the most common complaint in the open answers that we received, and it was also the most common problem that respondents said they struggle with. Based on our respondents' answers, this comes down to three main bottlenecks:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Changes in workspaces trigger unnecessary rebuilds.</strong> If you modify a crate in a workspace that has several dependent crates and perform a rebuild, all those dependent crates will currently have to be recompiled. This can cause a lot of unnecessary work and dramatically increase the latency of rebuilds in large (or deep) workspaces. We have some ideas about how to improve this workflow, such as the <a rel="external" href="https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-project-goals/2025h2/relink-dont-rebuild.html">"Relink, don't rebuild"</a> proposal, but these are currently in a very experimental stage.</li> <li><strong>The linking phase is too slow.</strong> This was a very common complaint, and it is indeed a real issue, because unlike the rest of the compilation process, linking is always performed "from scratch". The Rust compiler usually delegates linking to an external/system linker, so its performance is not completely within our hands. However, we are attempting to switch to faster linkers by default. For example, the most popular target (<code>x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu</code>) will very soon switch to the <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/01/rust-lld-on-1.90.0-stable">LLD linker</a>, which provides significant performance wins. Long-term, it is possible that some linkers (e.g. <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/davidlattimore/wild">wild</a>) will allow us to perform even linking incrementally.</li> <li><strong>Incremental rebuild of a single crate is too slow.</strong> The performance of this workflow depends on the cleverness of the incremental engine of the Rust compiler. While it is already very sophisticated, there are some parts of the compilation process that are not incremental yet or that are not cached in an optimal way. For example, expansion of derive proc macros is not currently cached, although work is underway to <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/145354">change that</a>.</li> </ul> <p>Several users have mentioned that they would like to see Rust perform hot-patching (such as the <code>subsecond</code> system used by the Dioxus UI framework or similar approaches used e.g. by the Bevy game engine). While these hot-patching systems are very exciting and can produce truly near-instant rebuild times for specialized use-cases, it should be noted that they also come with many limitations and edge-cases, and it does not seem that a solution that would allow hot-patching to work in a robust way has been found yet.</p> <p>To gauge how long is the typical rebuild latency, we asked our respondents to pick a single Rust project that they work on and which causes them to struggle with build times the most, and tell us how long they have to wait for it to be rebuilt after making a code change.</p> <!-- Chart rebuild-wait-time start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="rebuild-wait-time"><noscript> <img alt="rebuild-wait-time" src="rebuild-wait-time.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="rebuild-wait-time.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="rebuild-wait-time.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart rebuild-wait-time end --> <p>Even though many developers do not actually experience this latency after each code change, as they consume results of type checking or inline annotations in their code editor, the fact that 55% of respondents have to wait more than ten seconds for a rebuild is far from ideal.</p> <p>If we partition these results based on answers to other questions, it is clear that the rebuild times depend a lot on the size of the project:</p> <!-- Chart rebuild-wait-time-code-size start --> <div> <div class id="rebuild-wait-time-code-size"><noscript> <img alt="rebuild-wait-time-code-size" src="rebuild-wait-time-code-size.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="rebuild-wait-time-code-size.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="rebuild-wait-time-code-size.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart rebuild-wait-time-code-size end --> <p>And to a lesser factor also on the number of used dependencies:</p> <!-- Chart rebuild-wait-time-dep-count start --> <div> <div class id="rebuild-wait-time-dep-count"><noscript> <img alt="rebuild-wait-time-dep-count" src="rebuild-wait-time-dep-count.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="rebuild-wait-time-dep-count.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="rebuild-wait-time-dep-count.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart rebuild-wait-time-dep-count end --> <p>We would love to get to a point where the time needed to rebuild a Rust project is dependent primarily on the amount of performed code changes, rather than on the size of the codebase, but clearly we are not there yet.</p> <h3 id="type-checking-and-ide-performance"><a class="anchor" href="#type-checking-and-ide-performance" aria-hidden="true"></a> Type checking and IDE performance</h3> <p>Approximately 60% of respondents say that they use <code>cargo</code> terminal commands to type check, build or test their code, with <code>cargo check</code> being the most commonly used command performed after each code change:</p> <!-- Chart cargo-commands start --> <div> <div class="matrix-chart" id="cargo-commands"><noscript> <img alt="cargo-commands" src="cargo-commands.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="cargo-commands.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="cargo-commands.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart cargo-commands end --> <p>While the performance of <code>cargo check</code> does not seem to be as big of a blocker as e.g. incremental rebuilds, it also causes some pain points. One of the most common ones present in the survey responses is the fact that <code>cargo check</code> does not share the build cache with <code>cargo build</code>. This causes additional compilation to happen when you run e.g. <code>cargo check</code> several times to find all type errors, and when it succeeds, you follow up with <code>cargo build</code> to actually produce a built artifact. This workflow is an example of competing trade-offs, because sharing the build cache between these two commands by unifying them more would likely make <code>cargo check</code> itself slightly slower, which might be undesirable to some users. It is possible that we might be able to find some middle ground to improve the status quo though. You can follow updates to this work in <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/3501">this issue</a>.</p> <p>A related aspect is the latency of type checking in code editors and IDEs. Around 87% of respondents say that they use inline annotations in their editor as the primary mechanism of inspecting compiler errors, and around 33% of them consider waiting for these annotations to be a big blocker. In the open answers, we also received many reports of Rust Analyzer's performance and memory usage being a limiting factor.</p> <p>The maintainers of Rust Analyzer are working hard on improving its performance. Its caching system is <a rel="external" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn6qwhMNBJo">being improved</a> to reduce analysis latency, the distributed builds of the editor are now <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-analyzer/pull/19582">optimized with PGO</a>, which provided 15-20% performance wins, and work is underway to integrate the compiler's <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-analyzer/pull/20329">new trait solver</a> into Rust Analyzer, which could eventually also result in increased performance.</p> <p>More than 35% users said that they consider the IDE and Cargo <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/4282">blocking one another</a> to be a big problem. There is an existing workaround for this, where you can configure Rust Analyzer to use a different target directory than Cargo, at the cost of increased disk space usage. We realized that this workaround has not been documented in a very visible way, so we added it to the <a rel="external" href="https://rust-analyzer.github.io/book/faq.html#rust-analyzer-and-cargo-compete-over-the-build-lock">FAQ section</a> of the Rust Analyzer book.</p> <h3 id="clean-and-ci-builds"><a class="anchor" href="#clean-and-ci-builds" aria-hidden="true"></a> Clean and CI builds</h3> <p>Around 20% of participants responded that clean builds are a significant blocker for them. In order to improve their performance, you can try a recently introduced experimental Cargo and compiler option called <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2025/07/15/call-for-testing-hint-mostly-unused"><code>hint-mostly-unused</code></a>, which can in certain situations help improve the performance of clean builds, particularly if your dependencies contain a lot of code that might not actually be used by your crate(s).</p> <p>One area where clean builds might happen often is Continuous Integration (CI). 1495 respondents said that they use CI to build Rust code, and around 25% of them consider its performance to be a big blocker for them. However, almost 36% of respondents who consider CI build performance to be a big issue said that they do not use any caching in CI, which we found surprising. One explanation might be that the generated artifacts (the <code>target</code> directory) is too large for effective caching, and runs into usage limits of CI providers, which is something that we saw mentioned repeatedly in the open answers section. We have recently introduced an experimental Cargo and compiler option called <a rel="external" href="https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/cargo/reference/unstable.html#no-embed-metadata"><code>-Zembed-metadata</code></a> that is designed to reduce the size of the <code>target</code> directories, and work is also underway to regularly <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/13136">garbage collect</a> them. This might help with the disk space usage issue somewhat in the future.</p> <p>One additional way to significantly reduce disk usage is to reduce the amount of generated debug information, which brings us to the next section.</p> <h2 id="debug-information"><a class="anchor" href="#debug-information" aria-hidden="true"></a> Debug information</h2> <p>The default Cargo <code>dev</code> profile generates full debug information (debuginfo) both for workspace crates and also all dependencies. This enables stepping through code with a debugger, but it also increases disk usage of the <code>target</code> directory, and crucially it makes compilation and linking slower. This effect can be quite large, as our benchmarks show a possible improvement of <a rel="external" href="https://perf.rust-lang.org/compare.html?start=0d0f4eac8b98133e5da6d3604d86a8f3b5a67844&amp;end=71ea9a0cacc3473c7b6852c17453259f74635c62&amp;stat=cycles%3Au&amp;doc=false&amp;check=false&amp;opt=false">2-30% in cycle counts</a> if we reduce the debuginfo level to <code>line-tables-only</code> (which only generates enough debuginfo for backtraces to work), and the improvements are <a rel="external" href="https://perf.rust-lang.org/compare.html?start=bea625f3275e3c897dc965ed97a1d19ef7831f01&amp;end=87c3e1ecd699573f7cb4c9074b8727956bd37a74&amp;stat=cycles%3Au&amp;check=false&amp;opt=false&amp;doc=false">even larger</a> if we disable debuginfo generation completely<sup class="footnote-reference" id="fr-lld-1"><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/10/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025-results/#fn-lld">[1]</a></sup>.</p> <p>However, if Rust developers debug their code after most builds, then this cost might be justified. We thus asked them how often they use a debugger to debug their Rust code:</p> <!-- Chart debugger start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="debugger"><noscript> <img alt="debugger" src="debugger.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="debugger.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="debugger.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart debugger end --> <p>Based on these results, it seems that the respondents of our survey do not actually use a debugger all that much<sup class="footnote-reference" id="fr-why-not-debug-1"><a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/10/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025-results/#fn-why-not-debug">[2]</a></sup>.</p> <p>However, when we asked people if they require debuginfo to be generated by default, the responses were much less clear-cut:</p> <!-- Chart required-debuginfo start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="required-debuginfo"><noscript> <img alt="required-debuginfo" src="required-debuginfo.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="required-debuginfo.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="required-debuginfo.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart required-debuginfo end --> <p>This is the problem with changing defaults: it is challenging to improve the workflows of one user without regressing the workflow of another. For completeness, here are the answers to the previous question partitioned on the answer to the "How often do you use a debugger" question:</p> <!-- Chart required-debuginfo-debugger start --> <div> <div class id="required-debuginfo-debugger"><noscript> <img alt="required-debuginfo-debugger" src="required-debuginfo-debugger.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="required-debuginfo-debugger.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="required-debuginfo-debugger.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart required-debuginfo-debugger end --> <p>It was surprising for us to see that around a quarter of respondents who (almost) never use a debugger still want to have full debuginfo generated by default.</p> <p>Of course, you can always disable debuginfo manually to improve your build performance, but not everyone knows about that option, and defaults matter a lot. The Cargo team is <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/15931">considering</a> ways of changing the status quo, for example by reducing the level of generated debug information in the <code>dev</code> profile, and introducing a new built-in profile designed for debugging.</p> <h2 id="workarounds-for-improving-build-performance"><a class="anchor" href="#workarounds-for-improving-build-performance" aria-hidden="true"></a> Workarounds for improving build performance</h2> <p>Build performance of Rust is affected by many different aspects, including the configuration of the build system (usually Cargo) and the Rust compiler, but also the organization of Rust crates and used source code patterns. There are thus several approaches that can be used to improve build performance by either using different configuration options or restructuring source code. We asked our respondents if they are even aware of such possibilities, whether they have tried them and how effective they were:</p> <!-- Chart compile-time-improvement-mechanisms start --> <div> <div class="matrix-chart" id="compile-time-improvement-mechanisms"><noscript> <img alt="compile-time-improvement-mechanisms" src="compile-time-improvement-mechanisms.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="compile-time-improvement-mechanisms.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="compile-time-improvement-mechanisms.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart compile-time-improvement-mechanisms end --> <p>It seems that the most popular (and effective) mechanisms for improving build performance are reducing the number of dependencies and their activated features, and splitting larger crates into smaller crates. The most common way of improving build performance without making source code changes seems to be the usage of an alternative linker. It seems that especially the mold and LLD linkers are very popular:</p> <!-- Chart alternative-linker start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="alternative-linker"><noscript> <img alt="alternative-linker" src="alternative-linker.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="alternative-linker.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="alternative-linker.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="alternative-linker-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart alternative-linker end --> <p>We have good news here! The most popular <code>x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu</code> Linux target will start using the LLD linker in the next Rust stable release, resulting in faster link times <em>by default</em>. Over time, we will be able to evaluate how disruptive is this change to the overall Rust ecosystem, and whether we could e.g. switch to a different (even faster) linker.</p> <h3 id="build-performance-guide"><a class="anchor" href="#build-performance-guide" aria-hidden="true"></a> Build performance guide</h3> <p>We were surprised by the relatively large number of users who were unaware of some approaches for improving compilation times, in particular those that are very easy to try and typically do not require source code changes (such as reducing debuginfo or using a different linker or a codegen backend). Furthermore, almost 42% of respondents have not tried to use <em>any</em> mechanism for improving build performance whatsoever. While this is not totally unexpected, as some of these mechanisms require using the nightly toolchain or making non-trivial changes to source code, we think that one the reasons is also simply that Rust developers might not know about these mechanisms being available. In the open answers, several people also noted that they would appreciate if there was some sort of official guidance from the Rust Project about such mechanisms for improving compile times.</p> <p>It should be noted that the mechanisms that we asked about are in fact workarounds that present various trade-offs, and these should always be carefully considered. Several people have expressed dissatisfaction with some of these workarounds in the open answers, as they find it unacceptable to modify their code (which could sometimes result e.g. in increased maintenance costs or worse runtime performance) just to achieve reasonable compile times. Nevertheless, these workarounds can still be incredibly useful in some cases.</p> <p>The feedback that we received shows that it might be beneficial to spread awareness of these mechanisms in the Rust community more, as some of them can make a really large difference in build performance, but also to candidly explain the trade-offs that they introduce. Even though several great resources that cover this topic already exist online, we decided to create an <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/pull/15924">official guide</a> for optimizing build performance (currently work-in-progress), which will likely be hosted in the <a rel="external" href="https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo">Cargo book</a>. The aim of this guide is to increase the awareness of various mechanisms for improving build performance, and also provide a framework for evaluating their trade-offs.</p> <p>Our long-standing goal is to make compilation so fast that similar workarounds will not be necessary anymore for the vast majority of use-cases. However, there is no free lunch, and the combination of Rust's strong type system guarantees, its compilation model and also heavy focus on runtime performance often go against very fast (re)build performance, and might require usage of at least some workarounds. We hope that this guide will help Rust developers learn about them and evaluate them for their specific use-case.</p> <h2 id="understanding-why-builds-are-slow"><a class="anchor" href="#understanding-why-builds-are-slow" aria-hidden="true"></a> Understanding why builds are slow</h2> <p>When Rust developers experience slow builds, it can be challenging to identify where exactly is the compilation process spending time, and what could be the bottleneck. It seems that only very few Rust developers leverage tools for profiling their builds:</p> <!-- Chart profiling-tools start --> <div> <div class="matrix-chart" id="profiling-tools"><noscript> <img alt="profiling-tools" src="profiling-tools.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="profiling-tools.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="profiling-tools.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart profiling-tools end --> <p>This hardly comes as a surprise. There are currently not that many ways of intuitively understanding the performance characteristics of Cargo and <code>rustc</code>. Some tools offer only a limited amount of information (e.g. <code>cargo build --timings</code>), and the output of others (e.g. <code>-Zself-profile</code>) is very hard to interpret without knowledge of the compiler internals.</p> <p>To slightly improve this situation, we have recently added support for displaying <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/pull/15923">link times</a> to the <code>cargo build --timings</code> output, to provide more information about the possible bottleneck in crate compilation (note this feature has not been stabilized yet).</p> <p>Long-term, it would be great to have tooling that could help Rust developers diagnose compilation bottlenecks in their crates without them having to understand how the compiler works. For example, it could help answer questions such as "Which code had to be recompiled after a given source change" or "Which (proc) macros take the longest time to expand or produce the largest output", and ideally even offer some actionable suggestions. We plan to work on such tooling, but it will take time to manifest.</p> <p>One approach that could help Rust compiler contributors understand why are Rust (re)builds slow "in the wild" is the opt-in <a rel="external" href="https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-project-goals/2025h1/metrics-initiative.html">compilation metrics collection initiative</a>.</p> <h2 id="what-s-next"><a class="anchor" href="#what-s-next" aria-hidden="true"></a> What's next</h2> <p>There are more interesting things in the survey results, for example how do answers to selected questions differ based on the used operating system. You can examine the full results in the <a rel="external" href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rust-lang/surveys/main/surveys/2025/compiler-performance-survey/report/compiler-performance-2025-report.pdf">full report PDF</a>.</p> <p>We would like to thank once more everyone who has participated in our survey. It helped us understand which workflows are the most painful for Rust developers, and especially the open answers provided several great suggestions that we tried to act upon.</p> <p>Even though the Rust compiler is getting increasingly faster every year, we understand that many Rust developers require truly significant improvements to improve their productivity, rather than "just" incremental performance wins. Our goal for the future is to finally stabilize long-standing initiatives that could improve build performance a lot, such as the <a rel="external" href="https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-project-goals/2025h2/production-ready-cranelift.html">Cranelift codegen backend</a> or the <a rel="external" href="https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-project-goals/2025h2/parallel-front-end.html">parallel compiler frontend</a>. One such initiative (using a <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/01/rust-lld-on-1.90.0-stable">faster linker by default</a>) will finally land soon, but the fact that it took many years shows how difficult it is to make such large cutting changes to the compilation process.</p> <p>There are other ambitious ideas for reducing (re)build times, such as <a rel="external" href="https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-project-goals/2025h2/relink-dont-rebuild.html">avoiding unnecessary workspace rebuilds</a> or e.g. using some form of <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/davidlattimore/wild">incremental linking</a>, but these will require a lot of work and design discussions.</p> <p>We know that some people are wondering why it takes so much time to achieve progress in improving the build performance of Rust. The answer is relatively simple. These changes require a lot of work, domain knowledge (that takes a relatively long time to acquire) and many discussions and code reviews, and the pool of people that have time and motivation to work on them or review these changes is very limited. Current compiler maintainers and contributors (many of whom work on the compiler as volunteers, without any funding) work very hard to keep up with maintaining the compiler and keeping it working with the high-quality bar that Rust developers expect, across many targets, platforms and operating systems. Introducing large structural changes, which are likely needed to reach massive performance improvements, would require a lot of concentrated effort and funding.</p> <!-- Chart scripts --> <script charset="utf-8" src="/scripts/plotly-basic-2.29.0.min.js"></script> <script src="charts.js"></script> <section class="footnotes"> <ol class="footnotes-list"> <li id="fn-lld"> <p>This benchmark was already performed using the fast LLD linker. If a slower linker was used, the build time wins would likely be even larger. <a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/10/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025-results/#fr-lld-1">↩</a></p> </li> <li id="fn-why-not-debug"> <p>Potentially because of the strong invariants upheld by the Rust type system, and partly also because the Rust debugging experience might not be optimal for many users, which is a feedback that we received in the <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/02/13/2024-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results/#challenges">State of Rust 2024 survey</a>. <a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/10/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025-results/#fr-why-not-debug-1">↩</a></p> </li> </ol> </section> Jakub Beránek 2025-06-30T00:00:00+00:00 2025-06-30T00:00:00+00:00 https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2025/06/30/2025-leadership-council-survey/ <p>One of the responsibilities of the <a rel="external" href="https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/leadership-council">leadership council</a>, formed by <a rel="external" href="https://rust-lang.github.io/rfcs/3392-leadership-council.html">RFC 3392</a>, is to solicit feedback on a yearly basis from the Project on how we are performing our duties.</p> <blockquote> <p>Each year, the Council must solicit feedback on whether the Council is serving its purpose effectively from all willing and able Project members and openly discuss this feedback in a forum that allows and encourages active participation from all Project members. To do so, the Council and other Project members consult the high-level duties, expectations, and constraints listed in this RFC and any subsequent revisions thereof to determine if the Council is meeting its duties and obligations.</p> </blockquote> <p>We are running a quick annual survey, primarily for Rust project members to provide feedback on the Leadership Council. However, even if you are not a member, feel free to fill out the survey too -- we welcome input from those interacting with the Council in other capacities.</p> <p>This survey is anonymous. The Council will go through all answers and release a summary after the survey is complete, similar to the one published <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2024/08/26/council-survey/">last year</a>.</p> <p>Please fill out the survey <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/rust-leadership-council-2025">here</a>. It will be open for 3 weeks, closing on 2025-07-21.</p> Leadership Council 2025-06-16T00:00:00+00:00 2025-06-16T00:00:00+00:00 https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/06/16/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025/ <p>We're launching a <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/rust-compiler-performance-2025">Rust Compiler Performance Survey</a>.</p> <blockquote> <p>The results of the survey can be found <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/10/rust-compiler-performance-survey-2025-results/">here</a>.</p> </blockquote> <p>Long compile times of Rust code are frequently being cited as one of the biggest <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/02/13/2024-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results/#challenges">challenges</a> limiting the productivity of Rust developers. Rust compiler contributors are of course aware of that, and they are continuously working to improve the situation, by finding <a rel="external" href="https://nnethercote.github.io/2025/03/19/how-to-speed-up-the-rust-compiler-in-march-2025.html">new ways</a> of speeding up the compiler, <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/rust-lang/rustc-perf/blob/master/triage/README.md">triaging performance regressions</a> and <a rel="external" href="https://perf.rust-lang.org/dashboard.html">measuring</a> our long-term performance improvements. Recently, we also made progress on some <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/140525">large changes</a> that have been in the making for a long time, which could significantly improve compiler performance by default.</p> <p>When we talk about compilation performance, it is important to note that it is not always so simple as determining how long does it take <code>rustc</code> to compile a crate. There are many diverse development workflows that might have competing trade-offs, and that can be bottlenecked by various factors, such as the integration of the compiler with the used build system.</p> <p>In order to better understand these workflows, we have prepared a <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/rust-compiler-performance-2025">Rust Compiler Performance Survey</a>. This survey is focused specifically on compilation performance, which allows us to get more detailed data than what we usually get from the annual State of Rust survey. The data from this survey will help us find areas where we should focus our efforts on improving the productivity of Rust developers.</p> <p><strong>You can fill out the survey <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/rust-compiler-performance-2025">here</a>.</strong></p> <p>Filling the survey should take you approximately 10 minutes, and the survey is fully anonymous. We will accept submissions until Monday, July 7th, 2025. After the survey ends, we will evaluate the results and post key insights on this blog.</p> <p>We invite you to fill the survey, as your responses will help us improve Rust compilation performance. Thank you!</p> Jakub Beránek 2025-04-04T00:00:00+00:00 2025-04-04T00:00:00+00:00 https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/04/04/vision-doc-survey/ <p>tl;dr: Please take our <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/fuznhxp3">survey here</a></p> <p>Rust turns 10 this year. It's a good time to step back and assess where we are at and to get aligned around where we should be going. Where is Rust succeeding at <em>empowering everyone to build reliable, efficient software</em> (as it says on our webpage)? Where are there opportunities to do better? To that end, we have taken on the <a rel="external" href="https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-project-goals/2025h1/rust-vision-doc.html">goal of authoring a Rust Vision RFC</a>, with the first milestone being to prepare a draft for review at the upcoming Rust All Hands.</p> <h3 id="goals-and-non-goals"><a class="anchor" href="#goals-and-non-goals" aria-hidden="true"></a> Goals and non-goals</h3> <p>The vision RFC has <strong>two goals</strong></p> <ul> <li>to build a shared understanding of <strong>where we are</strong> and</li> <li>to identify <strong>where we should be going</strong> at a high-level.</li> </ul> <p>The vision RFC also has a <strong>non-goal</strong>, which is to provide specific designs or feature recommendations. We'll have plenty of time to write detailed RFCs for that. The vision RFC will instead focus more on higher-level recommendations and on understanding what people need and want from Rust in various domains.</p> <p>We hope that by answering the above questions, we will then be able to evolve Rust with more confidence. It will also help Rust users (and would-be users) to understand what Rust is for and where it is going.</p> <h3 id="community-and-technology-are-both-in-scope"><a class="anchor" href="#community-and-technology-are-both-in-scope" aria-hidden="true"></a> Community <em>and</em> technology are both in scope</h3> <p>The scope of the vision RFC is not limited to the technical design of Rust. It will also cover topics like</p> <ul> <li>the experience of open-source maintainers and contributors, both for the Rust project and for Rust crates;</li> <li>integrating global Rust communities across the world;</li> <li>and building momentum and core libraries for particular domains, like embedded, CLI, or gamedev.</li> </ul> <h3 id="gathering-data"><a class="anchor" href="#gathering-data" aria-hidden="true"></a> Gathering data</h3> <p>To answer the questions we have set, we need to gather data - we want to do our best <em>not</em> to speculate. This is going to come in two main formats:</p> <ol> <li><strong>A <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/fuznhxp3">survey</a></strong> about peoples' experiences with Rust (see below). Unlike the Annual Rust survey, the questions are open-ended and free-form, and cover somewhat different topics. This also allows us to gather a list of people to potentially interview.</li> <li><strong>Interviews</strong> of people from various backgrounds and domains. In an ideal world, we would interview everyone who wants to be interviewed, but in reality we're going to try to interview as many people as we can to form a diverse and representative set.</li> </ol> <p>While we have some idea of who we want to talk to, we may be missing some! We're hoping that the survey will not only help us connect to the people that we want to talk to, but also potentially help us uncover people we haven't yet thought of. We are currently planning to talk to</p> <ul> <li>Rust users, novice to expert;</li> <li>Rust non-users (considering or not);</li> <li>Companies using (or considering) Rust, from startup to enterprise;</li> <li>Global or language-based Rust affinity groups;</li> <li>Domain-specific groups;</li> <li>Crate maintainers, big and small;</li> <li>Project maintainers and contributors, volunteer or professional;</li> <li>Rust Foundation staff.</li> </ul> <h3 id="our-roadmap-and-timeline"><a class="anchor" href="#our-roadmap-and-timeline" aria-hidden="true"></a> Our roadmap and timeline</h3> <p>Our current "end goal" is to author and open a vision RFC sometime during the second half of the year, likely in the fall. For this kind of RFC, though, the journey is really more important than the destination. We plan to author several drafts along the way and take feedback, both from Rust community members and from the public at large. The first milestone we are targeting is to prepare an <strong>initial report for review at the <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2024/09/02/all-hands.html">Rust All Hands</a> in May</strong>. To that end, the data gathering process starts <em>now</em> with the <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/fuznhxp3">survey</a>, but we intend to spend the month of April conducting interviews (and more after that).</p> <h3 id="how-you-can-help"><a class="anchor" href="#how-you-can-help" aria-hidden="true"></a> How you can help</h3> <p>For starters, fill out our <a rel="external" href="https://www.surveyhero.com/c/fuznhxp3">survey here</a>. This survey has three sections</p> <ol> <li>To put the remaining responses into context, the survey asks a few demographic questions to allow us to ensure we are getting good representation across domains, experience, and backgrounds.</li> <li>It asks a series of questions about your experiences with Rust. As mentioned before, this survey is quite different from the Annual Rust survey. If you have experiences in the context of a company or organization, please feel free to share those (submitting this separately is best)!</li> <li>It asks for recommendations as to whom we ought to speak to. Please only recommend yourself or people/companies/groups for which you have a specific contact.</li> </ol> <p><em>Note: <strong>The first part of the survey will only be shared publicly in aggregate, the second may be made public directly, and the third section will not be made public.</strong> For interviews, we can be more flexible with what information is shared publicly or not.</em></p> <p>Of course, other than taking the survey, you can also <em>share</em> it with people. We <em>really</em> want to reach people that may not otherwise see it through our typical channels. So, even better if you can help us do that!</p> <p>Finally, if you are active in the Rust maintainer community, feel free to join the <a rel="external" href="https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/channel/486265-vision-doc-2025"><code>#vision-doc-2025</code></a> channel on Zulip and say hello.</p> Jack Huey 2025-02-13T00:00:00+00:00 2025-02-13T00:00:00+00:00 https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/02/13/2024-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results/ <p>Hello, Rustaceans!</p> <p>The Rust Survey Team is excited to share the results of our <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2024/12/05/annual-survey-2024-launch.html">2024 survey on the Rust Programming language</a>, conducted between December 5, 2024 and December 23, 2024. As in previous years, the 2024 State of Rust Survey was focused on gathering insights and feedback from Rust users, and all those who are interested in the future of Rust more generally.</p> <p>This ninth edition of the survey surfaced new insights and learning opportunities straight from the global Rust language community, which we will summarize below. In addition to this blog post, <strong>we have also prepared a <a rel="external" href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rust-lang/surveys/main/surveys/2024-annual-survey/report/annual-survey-2024-report.pdf">report</a></strong> containing charts with aggregated results of all questions in the survey.</p> <p><strong>Our sincerest thanks to every community member who took the time to express their opinions and experiences with Rust over the past year. Your participation will help us make Rust better for everyone.</strong></p> <p>There's a lot of data to go through, so strap in and enjoy!</p> <h2 id="participation"><a class="anchor" href="#participation" aria-hidden="true"></a> Participation</h2> <table><thead><tr><th style="text-align: center"><strong>Survey</strong></th><th style="text-align: right"><strong>Started</strong></th><th style="text-align: right"><strong>Completed</strong></th><th style="text-align: right"><strong>Completion rate</strong></th><th style="text-align: right"><strong>Views</strong></th></tr></thead><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center">2023</td><td style="text-align: right">11 950</td><td style="text-align: right">9 710</td><td style="text-align: right">82.2%</td><td style="text-align: right">16 028</td></tr> <tr><td style="text-align: center">2024</td><td style="text-align: right">9 450</td><td style="text-align: right">7 310</td><td style="text-align: right">77.4%</td><td style="text-align: right">13 564</td></tr> </tbody></table> <p>As shown above, in 2024, we have received fewer survey views than in the previous year. This was likely caused simply by the fact that the survey ran only for two weeks, while in the previous year it ran for almost a month. However, the completion rate has also dropped, which seems to suggest that the survey might be a bit too long. We will take this into consideration for the next edition of the survey.</p> <h2 id="community"><a class="anchor" href="#community" aria-hidden="true"></a> Community</h2> <p>The State of Rust survey not only gives us excellent insight into how many Rust users around the world are using and experiencing the language but also gives us insight into the makeup of our global community. This information gives us a sense of where the language is being used and where access gaps might exist for us to address over time. We hope that this data and our related analysis help further important discussions about how we can continue to prioritize global access and inclusivity in the Rust community.</p> <p>Same as every year, we asked our respondents in which country they live in. The top 10 countries represented were, in order: United States (22%), Germany (14%), United Kingdom (6%), France (6%), China (5%), Canada (3%), Netherlands (3%), Russia (3%), Australia (2%), and Sweden (2%). We are happy to see that Rust is enjoyed by users from all around the world! You can try to find your country in the chart below:</p> <!-- Chart where-do-you-live start --> <div> <div class="pie-chart" id="where-do-you-live" style="height:600px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="where-do-you-live" height="600" src="where-do-you-live.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="where-do-you-live.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="where-do-you-live.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart where-do-you-live end --> <p>We also asked whether respondents consider themselves members of a marginalized community. Out of those who answered, 74.5% selected no, 15.5% selected yes, and 10% preferred not to say.</p> <p>We have asked the group that selected “yes” which specific groups they identified as being a member of. The majority of those who consider themselves a member of an underrepresented or marginalized group in technology identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or otherwise non-heterosexual. The second most selected option was neurodivergent at 46% followed by trans at 35%.</p> <!-- Chart which-marginalized-group start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="which-marginalized-group" style="height:500px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="which-marginalized-group" height="500" src="which-marginalized-group.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="which-marginalized-group.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-marginalized-group.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart which-marginalized-group end --> <p>Each year, we must acknowledge the diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI) related gaps in the Rust community and open source as a whole. We believe that excellent work is underway at the Rust Foundation to advance global access to Rust community gatherings and distribute grants to a diverse pool of maintainers each cycle, which you can learn more about <a rel="external" href="https://rustfoundation.org/community">here</a>. Even so, global inclusion and access is just one element of DEI, and the survey working group will continue to advocate for progress in this domain.</p> <h2 id="rust-usage"><a class="anchor" href="#rust-usage" aria-hidden="true"></a> Rust usage</h2> <p>The number of respondents that self-identify as a Rust user was quite similar to last year, around 92%. This high number is not surprising, since we primarily target existing Rust developers with this survey.</p> <!-- Chart do-you-use-rust start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="do-you-use-rust" style="height:300px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="do-you-use-rust" height="300" src="do-you-use-rust.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="do-you-use-rust.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="do-you-use-rust.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart do-you-use-rust end --> <p>Similarly as last year, around 31% of those who did not identify as Rust users cited the perception of difficulty as the primary reason for not using Rust. The most common reason for not using Rust was that the respondents simply haven’t had the chance to try it yet.</p> <!-- Chart why-dont-you-use-rust start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="why-dont-you-use-rust" style="height:500px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="why-dont-you-use-rust" height="500" src="why-dont-you-use-rust.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="why-dont-you-use-rust.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="why-dont-you-use-rust.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="why-dont-you-use-rust-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart why-dont-you-use-rust end --> <p>Of the former Rust users who participated in the 2024 survey, 36% cited factors outside their control as a reason why they no longer use Rust, which is a 10pp decrease from last year. This year, we also asked respondents if they would consider using Rust again if an opportunity comes up, which turns out to be true for a large fraction of the respondents (63%). That is good to hear!</p> <!-- Chart why-did-you-stop-using-rust start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="why-did-you-stop-using-rust" style="height:500px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="why-did-you-stop-using-rust" height="500" src="why-did-you-stop-using-rust.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="why-did-you-stop-using-rust.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="why-did-you-stop-using-rust.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="why-did-you-stop-using-rust-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart why-did-you-stop-using-rust end --> <blockquote> <p>Closed answers marked with N/A were not present in the previous version(s) of the survey.</p> </blockquote> <p>Those not using Rust anymore told us that it is because they don't really need it (or the goals of their company changed) or because it was not the right tool for the job. A few reported being overwhelmed by the language or its ecosystem in general or that switching to or introducing Rust would have been too expensive in terms of human effort.</p> <p>Of those who used Rust in 2024, 53% did so on a daily (or nearly daily) basis — an increase of 4pp from the previous year. We can observe an upward trend in the frequency of Rust usage over the past few years, which suggests that Rust is being increasingly used at work. This is also confirmed by other answers mentioned in the Rust at Work section later below.</p> <!-- Chart how-often-do-you-use-rust start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="how-often-do-you-use-rust" style="height:300px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="how-often-do-you-use-rust" height="300" src="how-often-do-you-use-rust.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="how-often-do-you-use-rust.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="how-often-do-you-use-rust.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart how-often-do-you-use-rust end --> <p>Rust expertise is also continually increasing amongst our respondents! 20% of respondents can write (only) simple programs in Rust (a decrease of 3pp from 2023), while 53% consider themselves productive using Rust — up from 47% in 2023. While the survey is just one tool to measure the changes in Rust expertise overall, these numbers are heartening as they represent knowledge growth for many Rustaceans returning to the survey year over year.</p> <!-- Chart how-would-you-rate-your-rust-expertise start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="how-would-you-rate-your-rust-expertise" style="height:500px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="how-would-you-rate-your-rust-expertise" height="500" src="how-would-you-rate-your-rust-expertise.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="how-would-you-rate-your-rust-expertise.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="how-would-you-rate-your-rust-expertise.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart how-would-you-rate-your-rust-expertise end --> <p>Unsurprisingly, the most popular version of Rust is <em>latest stable</em>, either the most recent one or whichever comes with the users' Linux distribution. Almost a third of users also use the latest nightly release, due to various reasons (see below). However, it seems that the beta toolchain is not used much, which is a bit unfortunate. We would like to encourage Rust users to use the beta toolchain more (e.g. in CI environments) to help test soon-to-be stabilized versions of Rust.</p> <!-- Chart which-version-of-rust-do-you-use start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="which-version-of-rust-do-you-use" style="height:500px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="which-version-of-rust-do-you-use" height="500" src="which-version-of-rust-do-you-use.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="which-version-of-rust-do-you-use.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-version-of-rust-do-you-use.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-version-of-rust-do-you-use-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart which-version-of-rust-do-you-use end --> <p>People that use the nightly toolchain mostly do it to gain access to specific unstable language features. Several users have also mentioned that rustfmt works better for them on nightly or that they use the nightly compiler because of faster compilation times.</p> <!-- Chart if-you-use-nightly-why start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="if-you-use-nightly-why" style="height:500px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="if-you-use-nightly-why" height="500" src="if-you-use-nightly-why.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="if-you-use-nightly-why.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="if-you-use-nightly-why.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="if-you-use-nightly-why-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart if-you-use-nightly-why end --> <h2 id="learning-rust"><a class="anchor" href="#learning-rust" aria-hidden="true"></a> Learning Rust</h2> <p>To use Rust, programmers first have to learn it, so we are always interested in finding out how do they approach that. Based on the survey results, it seems that most users learn from Rust documentation and also from <a rel="external" href="https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/">The Rust Programming Language</a> book, which has been a favourite learning resource of new Rustaceans for a long time. Many people also seem to learn by reading the source code of Rust crates. The fact that both the documentation and source code of tens of thousands of Rust crates is available on <a rel="external" href="https://docs.rs">docs.rs</a> and GitHub makes this easier.</p> <!-- Chart what-kind-of-learning-materials-have-you-consumed start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="what-kind-of-learning-materials-have-you-consumed" style="height:500px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="what-kind-of-learning-materials-have-you-consumed" height="500" src="what-kind-of-learning-materials-have-you-consumed.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="what-kind-of-learning-materials-have-you-consumed.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-kind-of-learning-materials-have-you-consumed.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-kind-of-learning-materials-have-you-consumed-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart what-kind-of-learning-materials-have-you-consumed end --> <p>In terms of answers belonging to the "Other" category, they can be clustered into three categories: people using LLM (large language model) assistants (Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, etc.), reading the official Rust forums (Discord, <a rel="external" href="https://users.rust-lang.org/">URLO</a>) or being mentored while contributing to Rust projects. We would like to extend a big thank you to those making our spaces friendly and welcoming for newcomers, as it is important work and it pays off. Interestingly, a non-trivial number of people "learned by doing" and used rustc error messages and clippy as a guide, which is a good indicator of the quality of Rust diagnostics.</p> <p>In terms of formal education, it seems that Rust has not yet penetrated university curriculums, as this is typically a very slowly moving area. Only a very small number of respondents (around 3%) have taken a university Rust course or used university learning materials.</p> <!-- Chart have-you-taken-a-rust-course start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="have-you-taken-a-rust-course" style="height:400px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="have-you-taken-a-rust-course" height="400" src="have-you-taken-a-rust-course.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="have-you-taken-a-rust-course.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="have-you-taken-a-rust-course.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart have-you-taken-a-rust-course end --> <h2 id="programming-environment"><a class="anchor" href="#programming-environment" aria-hidden="true"></a> Programming environment</h2> <p>In terms of operating systems used by Rustaceans, Linux was the most popular choice, and it seems that it is getting increasingly popular year after year. It is followed by macOS and Windows, which have a very similar share of usage.</p> <!-- Chart which-os-do-you-use start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="which-os-do-you-use" style="height:400px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="which-os-do-you-use" height="400" src="which-os-do-you-use.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="which-os-do-you-use.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-os-do-you-use.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-os-do-you-use-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart which-os-do-you-use end --> <blockquote> <p>As you can see in the <a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/02/13/2024-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results/which-os-do-you-use-wordcloud.png">wordcloud</a>, there are also a few users that prefer Arch, btw.</p> </blockquote> <p>Rust programmers target a diverse set of platforms with their Rust programs. We saw a slight uptick in users targeting embedded and mobile platforms, but otherwise the distribution of platforms stayed mostly the same as last year. Since the WebAssembly target is quite diverse, we have split it into two separate categories this time. Based on the results it is clear that when using WebAssembly, it is mostly in the context of browsers (23%) rather than other use-cases (7%).</p> <!-- Chart which-os-do-you-target start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="which-os-do-you-target" style="height:500px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="which-os-do-you-target" height="500" src="which-os-do-you-target.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="which-os-do-you-target.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-os-do-you-target.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-os-do-you-target-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart which-os-do-you-target end --> <p>We cannot of course forget the favourite topic of many programmers: which IDE (developer environment) they use. Although Visual Studio Code still remains the most popular option, its share has dropped by 5pp this year. On the other hand, the Zed editor seems to have gained considerable traction recently. The small percentage of those who selected "Other" are using a wide range of different tools: from CursorAI to classics like Kate or Notepad++. Special mention to the 3 people using "ed", that's quite an achievement.</p> <!-- Chart what-ide-do-you-use start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="what-ide-do-you-use" style="height:500px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="what-ide-do-you-use" height="500" src="what-ide-do-you-use.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="what-ide-do-you-use.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-ide-do-you-use.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-ide-do-you-use-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart what-ide-do-you-use end --> <blockquote> <p>You can also take a look at the linked <a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/02/13/2024-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results/what-ide-do-you-use-wordcloud.png">wordcloud</a> that summarizes open answers to this question (the "Other" category), to see what other editors are also popular.</p> </blockquote> <h2 id="rust-at-work"><a class="anchor" href="#rust-at-work" aria-hidden="true"></a> Rust at Work</h2> <p>We were excited to see that more and more people use Rust at work for the majority of their coding, 38% vs 34% from last year. There is a clear upward trend in this metric over the past few years.</p> <!-- Chart do-you-personally-use-rust-at-work start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="do-you-personally-use-rust-at-work" style="height:500px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="do-you-personally-use-rust-at-work" height="500" src="do-you-personally-use-rust-at-work.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="do-you-personally-use-rust-at-work.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="do-you-personally-use-rust-at-work.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart do-you-personally-use-rust-at-work end --> <p>The usage of Rust within companies also seems to be rising, as 45% of respondents answered that their organisation makes non-trivial use of Rust, which is a 7pp increase from 2023.</p> <!-- Chart how-is-rust-used-at-your-organization start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="how-is-rust-used-at-your-organization" style="height:600px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="how-is-rust-used-at-your-organization" height="600" src="how-is-rust-used-at-your-organization.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="how-is-rust-used-at-your-organization.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="how-is-rust-used-at-your-organization.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart how-is-rust-used-at-your-organization end --> <p>Once again, the top reason employers of our survey respondents invested in Rust was the ability to build relatively correct and bug-free software. The second most popular reason was Rust’s performance characteristics. 21% of respondents that use Rust at work do so because they already know it, and it's thus their default choice, an uptick of 5pp from 2023. This seems to suggest that Rust is becoming one of the baseline languages of choice for more and more companies.</p> <!-- Chart why-you-use-rust-at-work start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="why-you-use-rust-at-work" style="height:500px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="why-you-use-rust-at-work" height="500" src="why-you-use-rust-at-work.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="why-you-use-rust-at-work.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="why-you-use-rust-at-work.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart why-you-use-rust-at-work end --> <p>Similarly to the previous year, a large percentage of respondents (82%) report that Rust helped their company achieve its goals. In general, it seems that programmers and companies are quite happy with their usage of Rust, which is great!</p> <!-- Chart which-statements-apply-to-rust-at-work start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="which-statements-apply-to-rust-at-work" style="height:500px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="which-statements-apply-to-rust-at-work" height="500" src="which-statements-apply-to-rust-at-work.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="which-statements-apply-to-rust-at-work.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-statements-apply-to-rust-at-work.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart which-statements-apply-to-rust-at-work end --> <p>In terms of technology domains, the situation is quite similar to the previous year. Rust seems to be especially popular for creating server backends, web and networking services and cloud technologies. It also seems to be gaining more traction for embedded use-cases.</p> <!-- Chart technology-domain start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="technology-domain" style="height:600px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="technology-domain" height="600" src="technology-domain.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="technology-domain.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="technology-domain.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="technology-domain-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart technology-domain end --> <blockquote> <p>You can scroll the chart to the right to see more domains. Note that the Automotive domain was not offered as a closed answer in the 2023 survey (it was merely entered through open answers), which might explain the large jump.</p> </blockquote> <p>It is exciting to see the continued growth of professional Rust usage and the confidence so many users feel in its performance, control, security and safety, enjoyability, and more!</p> <h2 id="challenges"><a class="anchor" href="#challenges" aria-hidden="true"></a> Challenges</h2> <p>As always, one of the main goals of the State of Rust survey is to shed light on challenges, concerns, and priorities on Rustaceans’ minds over the past year.</p> <p>We have asked our users about aspects of Rust that limit their productivity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, slow compilation was at the top of the list, as it seems to be a perennial concern of Rust users. As always, there are efforts underway to improve the speed of the compiler, such as enabling the <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2023/11/09/parallel-rustc.html">parallel frontend</a> or switching to a <a rel="external" href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2024/05/17/enabling-rust-lld-on-linux.html">faster linker by default</a>. We invite you to test these improvements and let us know if you encounter any issues.</p> <p>Other challenges included subpar support for debugging Rust and high disk usage of Rust compiler artifacts. On the other hand, most Rust users seem to be very happy with its runtime performance, the correctness and stability of the compiler and also Rust's documentation.</p> <!-- Chart which-problems-limit-your-productivity start --> <div> <div class="matrix-chart" id="which-problems-limit-your-productivity" style="height:1000px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="which-problems-limit-your-productivity" height="600" src="which-problems-limit-your-productivity.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="which-problems-limit-your-productivity.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-problems-limit-your-productivity.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-problems-limit-your-productivity-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart which-problems-limit-your-productivity end --> <p>In terms of specific unstable (or missing) features that Rust users want to be stabilized (or implemented), the most desired ones were async closures and if/let while chains. Well, we have good news! Async closures will be stabilized in the next version of Rust (1.85), and if/let while chains will hopefully follow <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/132833">soon after</a>, once Edition 2024 is released (which will also happen in Rust 1.85).</p> <p>Other coveted features are generators (both sync and async) and more powerful generic const expressions. You can follow the <a rel="external" href="https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-project-goals/2025h1/goals.html">Rust Project Goals</a> to track the progress of these (and other) features.</p> <!-- Chart which-features-do-you-want-stabilized start --> <div> <div class="matrix-chart" id="which-features-do-you-want-stabilized" style="height:800px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="which-features-do-you-want-stabilized" height="600" src="which-features-do-you-want-stabilized.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="which-features-do-you-want-stabilized.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-features-do-you-want-stabilized.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="which-features-do-you-want-stabilized-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart which-features-do-you-want-stabilized end --> <p>In the open answers to this question, people were really helpful and tried hard to describe the most notable issues limiting their productivity. We have seen mentions of struggles with async programming (an all-time favourite), debuggability of errors (which people generally love, but they are not perfect for everyone) or Rust tooling being slow or resource intensive (rust-analyzer and rustfmt). Some users also want a better IDE story and improved interoperability with other languages.</p> <p>This year, we have also included a new question about the speed of Rust's evolution. While most people seem to be content with the status quo, more than a quarter of people who responded to this question would like Rust to stabilize and/or add features more quickly, and only 7% of respondents would prefer Rust to slow down or completely stop adding new features.</p> <!-- Chart what-do-you-think-about-rust-evolution start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="what-do-you-think-about-rust-evolution" style="height:500px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="what-do-you-think-about-rust-evolution" height="500" src="what-do-you-think-about-rust-evolution.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="what-do-you-think-about-rust-evolution.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-do-you-think-about-rust-evolution.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart what-do-you-think-about-rust-evolution end --> <p>Interestingly, when we asked respondents about their main worries for the future of Rust, one of the top answers remained the worry that Rust will become too complex. This seems to be in contrast with the answers to the previous question. Perhaps Rust users still seem to consider the complexity of Rust to be manageable, but they worry that one day it might become too much.</p> <p>We are happy to see that the amount of respondents concerned about Rust Project governance and lacking support of the Rust Foundation has dropped by about 6pp from 2023.</p> <!-- Chart what-are-your-biggest-worries-about-rust start --> <div> <div class="bar-chart" id="what-are-your-biggest-worries-about-rust" style="height:500px; width:100%;"><noscript> <img alt="what-are-your-biggest-worries-about-rust" height="500" src="what-are-your-biggest-worries-about-rust.png"/> </noscript></div> <div style="display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span>[<a href="what-are-your-biggest-worries-about-rust.png" target="_href_" title="Download chart as PNG">PNG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-are-your-biggest-worries-about-rust.svg" target="_href_" title="Download chart as SVG">SVG</a>]</span>&nbsp;<span>[<a href="what-are-your-biggest-worries-about-rust-wordcloud.png" target="_href_" title="Download open answers as wordcloud PNG">Wordcloud of open answers</a>]</span> </div> </div> <!-- Chart what-are-your-biggest-worries-about-rust end --> <h2 id="looking-ahead"><a class="anchor" href="#looking-ahead" aria-hidden="true"></a> Looking ahead</h2> <p>Each year, the results of the State of Rust survey help reveal the areas that need improvement in many areas across the Rust Project and ecosystem, as well as the aspects that are working well for our community.</p> <p>If you have any suggestions for the Rust Annual survey, please <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/rust-lang/surveys/issues">let us know</a>!</p> <p>We are immensely grateful to those who participated in the 2024 State of Rust Survey and facilitated its creation. While there are always challenges associated with developing and maintaining a programming language, this year we were pleased to see a high level of survey participation and candid feedback that will truly help us make Rust work better for everyone.</p> <p>If you’d like to dig into more details, we recommend you to browse through the full <a rel="external" href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rust-lang/surveys/main/surveys/2024-annual-survey/report/annual-survey-2024-report.pdf">survey report</a>.</p> <!-- Chart scripts --> <script charset="utf-8" src="/scripts/plotly-basic-2.29.0.min.js"></script> <script src="charts.js"></script> The Rust Survey Team