Redis exercise

Table of Contents

Let’s revisit & deepen our knowledge of a few areas.

Cargo

A Cargo package can (at the same time) contain:

  • 0 or 1 library crates

  • 0..n binary crates

it must contain at least one crate in total.

Cargo binaries

  • The default binary is the main() function in src/main.rs.

  • Additional binaries are stored in the src/bin/ directory.

  • Example binaries are located in examples/.

Cargo libraries

By default, the library crate is implemented in src/lib.rs and has the same module name as the package.

Cargo helpers

Cargo can be extended:

  • cargo-tree: show dependency graph

  • cargo-edit: add/remove/upgrade dependencies

  • cargo-watch: recompile/restart project on change

and many more.

Cargo crates

https://crates.io is the public crates registry. Dependencies specified by version only in Cargo.toml will be downloaded and installed from there.

Cargo crates (cont.)

Cargo also allows you to specify git or path (local) dependencies:

  • rand = { git = "https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/rand", branch = "next" }

  • hello_utils = { path = "hello_utils" }

Error handling: anyhow

anyhow is a popular crate for idiomatic error handling, simplifying common cases to quickly get a running. Its counterpart by the same author is thiserror which aids in fleshing out custom error types.

Ref: some discussion on the philosophy of error handling & reporting in Rust

Handling command line arguments

  • Rudimentary handling can be done using std::env::args

  • A feature-rich alternative is structopt.