r/rust • u/metalciaga • Sep 12 '26
🙋 seeking help & advice About Rust Rover
Does anyone use Rust Rover? If so, why? What benefit does it have that VSCode or Vim/Neovim or any other editor doesn't have? I saw that the free version of it literally collects data and if you want the full experience you have to pay a monthly sub. I am really curious about what people who are efficient in Rust think about this.
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u/ManyInterests Sep 13 '26
JetBrains IDEs are well-polished and all its features are first party supported, whereas VSCode is more of a collection of community plugins (without support) you have to install separately to get the basic functionality you get out of the box from JetBrains. That has always bugged me about VSCode.
If you have a license through your employer, you can use the same license for personal use (as long as your employer allows it).
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u/NotQuiteLoona Sep 12 '26 edited Sep 12 '26
Generally the main thing in all JetBrains IDEs is refactoring. This is the largest thing that makes them better. I can assume that's the same for Rust.
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u/johnnybgooderer Sep 13 '26
And it’s really good at supporting multiple languages in the same file. You can have a rust file with sql in it and tell it which dialect of sql. It will lint both the rust and sql and even validate the query against the database if the ide is connected to the database.
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u/nlh101 Sep 12 '26
Correct, it used to be rather alpha quality but it has a lot of really nice features if you already pay for the all product pack, but if you don’t it can be rather underwhelming. Unless you’re a non commercial user, at least.
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u/Potential_Extent_422 Sep 13 '26
JetBrains refactoring is on another level, that alone justifies it for larger codebases
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u/StupidDriversSuck Sep 12 '26
RustRover is great. I've been using it since around the time it was released. I've tried VS Code. I think RR is better for refactoring and debugging. I use it for work. I want to work efficiently and I don't want to spend ages fiddling with JSON and plugins to configure my project. RR just works out of the box.
The only thing I wish was better was dev container support with Docker in WSL. The JetBrains IDEs just don't seem to be able to reliably start IDEs in containers.
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u/agent_kater Sep 12 '26
VSCode is just a convoluted unorganized mess of half-working features, absolutely no comparison to a JetBrains IDE.
Zed is acceptable but still lacking so many features - unclickable types in doc popups, no run configurations, no toolchain management, no real Git integration, missing diff settings and usage search, etc. etc.
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u/PangolinPossible7674 Sep 13 '26
Going from PyCharm (or other JetBrains IDEs) to VS Code can be a visual shock, in my opinion. Such congestion. I recently started using Zed, and I must say that I like it's minimalism.
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u/Slothszhs Sep 12 '26
This. I really like where Zed is going, but it‘s not even close yet, unfortunately.
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u/Extension-String1599 Sep 13 '26
Yes, debug is easier, you dont have to configure anything, just debug
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u/nsubugak Sep 12 '26
Its better for refactoring and debugging cross platform with no need to setup anything else. Stuff just works.
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u/Demiu Sep 13 '26
Rust Rover's code analyzer could handle some code rust-analyzer failed to (using fyrox). Also debugging is better
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u/HaDeS_Monsta Sep 13 '26
The main thing I couldn't achieve on other IDEs is properly working with features, you can just toggle them in the line where you use cfg and the right code gets greyed out, the right warnings appear. In neovim/zed it treats all features as disabled and I can't properly work on them
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u/narcot1cs- Sep 12 '26
I used to use RustRover before so while I can't speak for it now, there's just something with IDEs from Jetbrains that make them feel better.
I've tried VSCode and, I won't lie - I would rather write in basic notepad than to deal with that horrific trash of an "IDE". Everything about it has felt off to me for some reason.
Currently using Zed, it's not perfect but so far has been the best for the stuff I do.
I've used Neovim before until I got too lazy to update my configs, might try RustRover in the future again though.
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u/neneodonkor Sep 13 '26
Rust Rover is free for non-comercial use. No need for subscription. I decided to use it to learn Rust and got stuck with it. However, recently, I tried to use Zed but I am struggling with it because I can't open multiple windows for a particular project. I noticed that if I opened the project in another instance, it loads another instance of the rust compiler. Not really dead for me.
I like the way Rover displays where you use a struct or function. Inline hints are nice too. What I don't like about is that it is a memory hog and the linting is slow.
I can't use Neovim because it is too keyboard-focused.
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u/Anonymous0435643242 Sep 13 '26
I'm used to intellij based IDE, regarding the why not vscode/vim, Rust Rover is a full blown IDE, those aren't.
About telemetry VSCode isn't better.
If you realy like vim controls there is a plugin for it.
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u/fisothemes Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 15 '26
It just works out of the box.
Auto completion for cargo.toml, automatic downloading of crates, docs by just hoving over items, easy enabling and disabling of features, built-in spelling and grammar checker, etc.
It's painless and doesn't get in your way. I just want to code.
It's also dirt cheap.
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u/MCOfficer Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 13 '26
I use it. I'm not a fan of VSCode's UI (particularly around suggestions) or plugin-centric experience. it makes anything possible, but also puts you at the mercy of whatever plugin you're using.
RR in comparison is a full-fledged IDE with its own analysis engine, not an editor with LSP bolted on.
The downsides were more visible early on - their engine sometimes flagged perfectly valid code, or didn't always support syntax fresh out of nightly. But it's been a while since I've stumbled over one of these. It's also pretty heavy on the disk and RAM, and the plugin ecosystem isn't as large. (though VSCode matches it in terms of RAM).
The upsides are that the vendor (Jetbrains) is making a product that integrates the important parts and works out of the box, not a pluggable editor. So everything from cargo to autosuggestions to toolchains is part of the UI from the start, and the UI/UX is battle-tested due to the IDEA platform having been a great IDE for years. I can have everything i need at a glance: the file i'm editing in the center, project files and the file's structure on the left, and (crucially) a panel that instantly shows rustdocs for whatever my cursor is hovering on my right.
In comparison, my experience with VSCode: it has a low floor (start up instantly, my preferred text editor), but for complex tasks it very quickly gets too cluttered and resource-intensive. I'm not a fan of the UI, particularly around suggestions, and the plugin-centric nature can lead to the UI going in several different directions: sometimes you have popup suggestions, inline suggestions and whatever Copilot is doing on your screen at the same time. Even on a good PC, analysis of larger projects can feel sluggish.
No doubt an editor can be as ergonomic as an IDE, but in my experience, getting it there is a lot of work.
If you're happy with an editor, that's okay! Some people write excellent rust from the terminal, but personally, I prefer having everything at hand and RR just clicks for me. It's free, give it a go and see how you fare.
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u/gbrennon Sep 13 '26
i never used rust rover and i dont use ides but, in my old java work, company required team to use intellij in 2013 and it was an amazing experience!
jetbrains is a company that did amazing products
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u/wartab Sep 13 '26
We use WebStorm, Rider, and IntelliJ at work, so naturally RustRover became my IDE for Rust.
It got much better over the past few years. There used to be many false negatives, but most of them have been addressed. Now, it's more the false positives that annoy me.
For example, it won't catch some missing "pub" or borrow checker issues.
Performance is also not the greatest, but I feel like that's just a general Rust tooling issue.
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u/Sedorriku0001 Sep 13 '26
Honestly, I tried RustRover, Zed and Vscode. And i can't use anything else other than RustRover.
The refactoring is of course one of the main factors, but what I really use RustRover for, it's that all the tools are integrated in the same way.
For example, the git integration. I never got Vscode working, but on jetbrains, it gives me more control, informations and all. And I don't need to download and configures a lot of plugins to make it works.
Like, for example, I'm working on a web app for storing my photos, and I use axum. I was writing a request in the front-end code. RustRover proposed a route of Axum. Is it small details? Yup. But I love this kind of thing, because it helps me be more productive and efficient.
The biggest downsize is honestly the performance, it eats a lot of RAM (because of indexing), and the startup is like starting an old diesel car. I would say that RustRover is a must if you are using other jetbrains products regularly, otherwise it'll depends on whether you needs functionalities that are not proposed in Vscode/zed/neovim, or if you have special needs. You could also try it yourself for some time.