Announcing Rust 1.85.0 and Rust 2024: A New Era for Rust Programming

The Rust team is thrilled to announce the release of Rust 1.85.0, bringing with it the stabilization of Rust 2024 Edition. As a systems programming language designed for performance, reliability, and safety, Rust continues to evolve with significant improvements.

If you have an existing installation of Rust via rustup, update to Rust 1.85.0 with:

rustup update stable

For those new to Rust, install it via rustup from the official Rust website. The detailed release notes for Rust 1.85.0 provide a comprehensive breakdown of all changes.

🚀 What’s New in Rust 1.85.0?

Rust 2024 Edition is Here!

Rust 2024 introduces opt-in changes that enhance the language while ensuring backward compatibility. Developers can now migrate to the latest edition with minimal disruptions.

Key Language Changes:

• RPIT Lifetime Capture Rules: Refinement of how impl Trait captures parameters.
• Unsafe Extern Blocks: Now require unsafe to explicitly indicate risk.
• Updated Match Ergonomics: Prevents ambiguous patterns and improves clarity.
• Macro Fragment Specifiers Update: expr now includes const and _ expressions.
• New Reserved Keywords: gen is now reserved for potential future enhancements.

Standard Library Updates:

• Prelude Additions: Future and IntoFuture are now included by default.
• Box<[T]> Implements IntoIterator: Simplifies iterator usage with boxed slices.
• Newly Marked Unsafe Functions: Some environment and process-related functions now require unsafe.

Cargo Enhancements:

• Rust-Version Aware Resolver: Ensures dependencies respect the rust-version field.
• Rejecting Unused Default Features: Improves dependency management within workspaces.

Tooling Improvements:

• Rustdoc Performance Boost: Combines multiple tests into a single execution unit.
• Rustfmt Updates: Introduces style editions for more granular formatting control.
• Clippy Lints Expansion: Provides enhanced recommendations and static analysis.

📌 Migrating to Rust 2024

Migration is made seamless with cargo fix:

cargo fix --edition

This command applies necessary adjustments while maintaining compatibility. The Rust community ensures that the transition is smooth and minimally disruptive.

🔥 Notable Features in Rust 1.85.0

Async Closures

Rust now fully supports async closures (async || {}), enabling direct usage of Future within closures:

let mut data: Vec<String> = vec![];

let closure = async || {
    data.push(String::from("Hello, async!"));
};

Improved Diagnostics

The new #[diagnostic::do_not_recommend] attribute allows library authors to prevent misleading suggestions in error messages.

Extended FromIterator and Extend for Tuples

Now supports tuples up to 12 elements:

let (vec1, vec2): (Vec<_>, Vec<_>) = [(1, "a"), (2, "b")].iter().cloned().unzip();

Deprecation of std::env::home_dir()

This function has been deprecated due to inconsistent behavior across platforms.

📌 Additional Tips for Rust Developers

Optimize Performance with cargo bench:

cargo bench

Measures and improves runtime efficiency.

Enable Clippy for Code Linting:

cargo clippy

This provides automated suggestions to enhance code quality.

Use cargo check for Faster Builds:

cargo check

Helps identify errors without compiling an entire project.

Experiment with Rust Nightly:

rustup default nightly

This grants early access to upcoming features and improvements.

🎉 Conclusion

Rust 1.85.0 and Rust 2024 Edition mark a significant step forward, introducing powerful new features while maintaining stability and backward compatibility. The Rust community continues to drive innovation, ensuring a smooth experience for developers across industries.

For a full breakdown of changes, visit the official Rust release notes.

🚀 Happy coding with Rust 1.85.0!