Editor Features

VS Code

Color configurations

It is possible to change the foreground/background color and font family/size of inlay hints. Just add this to your settings.json:

{
  "editor.inlayHints.fontFamily": "Courier New",
  "editor.inlayHints.fontSize": 11,

  "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    // Name of the theme you are currently using
    "[Default Dark+]": {
      "editorInlayHint.foreground": "#868686f0",
      "editorInlayHint.background": "#3d3d3d48",

      // Overrides for specific kinds of inlay hints
      "editorInlayHint.typeForeground": "#fdb6fdf0",
      "editorInlayHint.parameterForeground": "#fdb6fdf0",
    }
  }
}

You can customize the look of different semantic elements in the source code. For example, mutable bindings are underlined by default and you can override this behavior by adding the following section to your settings.json:

{
  "editor.semanticTokenColorCustomizations": {
    "rules": {
      "*.mutable": {
        "fontStyle": "", // underline is the default
      },
    }
  },
}

Most themes doesn’t support styling unsafe operations differently yet. You can fix this by adding overrides for the rules operator.unsafe, function.unsafe, and method.unsafe:

{
   "editor.semanticTokenColorCustomizations": {
         "rules": {
             "operator.unsafe": "#ff6600",
             "function.unsafe": "#ff6600",
             "method.unsafe": "#ff6600"
         }
    },
}

In addition to the top-level rules you can specify overrides for specific themes. For example, if you wanted to use a darker text color on a specific light theme, you might write:

{
   "editor.semanticTokenColorCustomizations": {
         "rules": {
             "operator.unsafe": "#ff6600"
         },
         "[Ayu Light]": {
            "rules": {
               "operator.unsafe": "#572300"
            }
         }
    },
}

Make sure you include the brackets around the theme name. For example, use "[Ayu Light]" to customize the theme Ayu Light.

Special `when` clause context for keybindings.

You may use inRustProject context to configure keybindings for rust projects only. For example:

{
    "key": "ctrl+alt+d",
    "command": "rust-analyzer.openDocs",
    "when": "inRustProject"
}

More about when clause contexts here.

Setting runnable environment variables

You can use "rust-analyzer.runnables.extraEnv" setting to define runnable environment-specific substitution variables. The simplest way for all runnables in a bunch:

"rust-analyzer.runnables.extraEnv": {
    "RUN_SLOW_TESTS": "1"
}

Or it is possible to specify vars more granularly:

"rust-analyzer.runnables.extraEnv": [
    {
        // "mask": null, // null mask means that this rule will be applied for all runnables
        env: {
                "APP_ID": "1",
                "APP_DATA": "asdf"
        }
    },
    {
        "mask": "test_name",
        "env": {
                "APP_ID": "2", // overwrites only APP_ID
        }
    }
]

You can use any valid regular expression as a mask. Also note that a full runnable name is something like run bin_or_example_name, test some::mod::test_name or test-mod some::mod, so it is possible to distinguish binaries, single tests, and test modules with this masks: "^run", "^test " (the trailing space matters!), and "^test-mod" respectively.

If needed, you can set different values for different platforms:

"rust-analyzer.runnables.extraEnv": [
    {
        "platform": "win32", // windows only
        env: {
                "APP_DATA": "windows specific data"
        }
    },
    {
        "platform": ["linux"],
        "env": {
                "APP_DATA": "linux data",
        }
    },
    { // for all platforms
        "env": {
                "APP_COMMON_DATA": "xxx",
        }
    }
]

Compiler feedback from external commands

Instead of relying on the built-in cargo check, you can configure Code to run a command in the background and use the $rustc-watch problem matcher to generate inline error markers from its output.

To do this you need to create a new VS Code Task and set "rust-analyzer.checkOnSave": false in preferences.

For example, if you want to run cargo watch instead, you might add the following to .vscode/tasks.json:

{
    "label": "Watch",
    "group": "build",
    "type": "shell",
    "command": "cargo watch",
    "problemMatcher": "$rustc-watch",
    "isBackground": true
}

VS Code Live Share has partial support for rust-analyzer.

Live Share requires the official Microsoft build of VS Code, OSS builds will not work correctly.

The host’s rust-analyzer instance will be shared with all guests joining the session. The guests do not have to have the rust-analyzer extension installed for this to work.

If you are joining a Live Share session and do have rust-analyzer installed locally, commands from the command palette will not work correctly since they will attempt to communicate with the local server.