Running a Rust program that is outside of the current directory

Question

How do I execute a Rust program when I am not currently inside the directory that holds the program? If I want to be in the Downloads/ directory and run a Rust file that is in the Desktop/ directory, how do I use cargo run ? I assumed I could do something like cargo run <path of rust file> .

Answer 1

To run a Rust file without dependencies, you can do so on a shell/command prompt.

Go to directory that looks like so:

Directory
-> main.rs

Run

rustc ./main.rs

This will spit out main ( main.exe on Windows) and you can run that normally as ./main ( ./main.exe on Windows)

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If you want to use Cargo, you'll have to create a Cargo.toml for it and put the Rust file into the src/ directory.

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If you want to not be in the same directory as the Rust file, then you can do

rustc "<path/to/your/file>/main.rs"

Answer 2

You can use the --manifest-path argument on cargo run to specify the path to Cargo.toml (sources files will be resolved relative to that).

For example:

$ cargo run --manifest-path ~/Desktop/src/myapp/Cargo.toml -- <program arguments>

Note that if you have a rustup toolchain override on the directory containing Cargo.toml , it will not be taken into account.