I really like the idea of a package/dependency manager. It just seems that when ever I am reading a tutorial and they want to import something that is not standard they say write this in to your TOMOL not cargo install it. Like when reading python docs they all say to use pip or something. Sorry it just seems that Cargo is somewhat overlooked or is it just my perception?
Maybe I am wrong or my understanding is oversimplified. But the way I understand it is that when you add a dependency to your cargo.toml file, when you run the build rust is going to cargo and downloading those dependencies you added for you and stores the dependencies with project files.
Then when you rebuild it is checking cargo to see if there is a later version and will update according to how you specified the version in the cargo.toml file.
So you are using cargo. it’s basically just automated, so you don’t have to manually interact with cargo the same way you do with pip.
You are confusing cargo and crates.io.
Cargo is the program doing all the downloading of dependencies, crates.io is the official registry (but there are ways to host your own for private crates, e.g. kellnr), Rust is just the compiler and does not do any downloading of anything. For completeness sake, rustup is the program you can use to install cargo, rust and some other tooling and data files.
cargo install installs a rust binary to your user space.
cargo add adds the dep to your project by editing your Cargo.toml.
Cargo is heavily used.
Your tutorial is the odd one.
cargo add <dep> is a relatively new command. For a long time you had to edit the Cargo.toml file to add a new dependency. So a lot of tutorials still use that as a way of adding a dependency. And other guides often copy from the older ones. They also can describe it this way as a way to introduce the Cargo.toml structure since it is not hard to hand edit. cargo add is just a convenience after all and it is still worth understanding the Cargo.toml structure.
But yes, many people do use cargo add for simply adding deps rather than editing the toml file. Though it is not uncommon to edit it by hand either.
cargo installis for installing rust programs for your user, not for adding dependencies to your Rust project. Many cargo subcommands can be installed this way, for instancecargo bloat.- The file you are talking about is called
Cargo.toml, because it is the file you need to write in order to configure cargo for your Rust project. TOML is the name of the file format. For details, please see the introductory chapter to Cargo in the Rust book. - Cargo recently got a new subcommand called
cargo add, which allows to add dependencies directly on the command line. However, all it does is to add/edit/remove the respective lines in Cargo.toml. (Personal opinion: I have found it way easier to just edit the file directly than to learn yet another command…)
That said: You still need to edit the Cargo.toml file, even if you solely use cargo add to manage your dependencies. That’s because that file contains a lot more information about your project than just the dependencies. For instance the current version, the feature-flags, your name, a link to the public repo,…
