Cargo-Rush

Overview

cargo-rush lets you build, test, and run your Rust code on a remote machine with ease. It keeps everything in sync between your local and remote environments using rsync.

Note: cargo-rush is still in active development and not ready for production use — yet. But I’m working on it constantly because, frankly, I really need it myself.

The Idea

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in school, working on my game engine. When I’m not at home, I use my laptop — which I absolutely despise. It’s a slow, clunky Acer convertible with barely any processing power. It’s fine for school work, but try compiling 300 crates in release mode on it.

Even a basic debug build (with dependencies cached!) takes at least 30 seconds. A full recompile in debug mode? That’s 10 minutes, easy.

It. Is. Slow.

But then I thought…

Wait, I have a really powerful PC running Arch Linux™ at home. Why not use that to handle compilation and just send the compiled binary back to the laptop? That way, I can take advantage of my desktop’s power without torturing my poor Celeron.

The Execution (Sort of)

Here’s how the final product will work:

First, you initialize cargo-rush in the root of your Rust project:

cargo rush --init

This creates a .cargorush.toml config file in the project root and, if a .gitignore is present, it automatically adds the config to it for convenience.

The .cargorush.toml file holds project-specific settings, like:

General info: project name, path, Rust version

Remote info: name, address, remote path, target platform

You can edit this file manually, or use the CLI. I want cargo-rush’s commands to feel familiar — think Git-style syntax.

Configuring a Remote

cargo rush remote add name user@address    # adds a remote
cargo rush remote remove name              # removes a remote
cargo rush remote list                     # lists remotes for the current project

Once your remote is configured, you can start building with cargo-rush. It only syncs the necessary files and only transfers the final binary back to your machine. On the next build, only modified files get re-synced.

If you don’t specify a remote path, cargo-rush uses a temporary directory—/tmp on Unix-like systems or C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\Temp on Windows. It figures this out using Rust’s built-in std::env::temp_dir().

Starting a Build

cargo rush build        # builds on the remote
cargo rush build -r     # builds in release mode
cargo rush clippy       # runs Clippy
cargo rush test         # runs tests

All of the above commands run just like they would locally. You’ll still see Cargo’s familiar output after each command—just as if you were running it on your own machine.

Afterword

Of course, these aren’t all the features I plan to add. If you have ideas, suggestions, concerns, or just want to chat—feel free to reach out on GitHub, Bluesky, or wherever. I really appreciate any kind of feedback.

I’m aiming to have this mostly done and stable by the end of summer 2025.

Cheers!