Currently, the easiest way to get up and running with Rust is to run the following command in your shell:

curl -s https://static.rust-lang.org/rustup.sh | sudo sh

This will install Rust into /usr/local and you usually need root permissions to do that. I had been looking for an alternative for two reasons:

• On my Macbook, /usr/local is mostly managed by Homebrew and brew doctor complains if it finds libraries that were put there by someone else.
• I don’t have root permissions at the university computer lab.

Fortunately, installing Rust into $HOME is relatively painless. rustup.sh lets you specify a custom prefix. The above command only has to be slightly tweaked:

curl -s https://static.rust-lang.org/rustup.sh | sh -s -- --prefix=$HOME/.local

Once Rust has been installed, there’s still three things left to do.

1. Put rustc etc. on your $PATH.
2. Tell rustc where to find the Rust libraries.
3. Tell man where to find the manual pages.

The first two points can be accomplished by adding the following to your $HOME/.bashrc or $HOME/.zshrc:

if [ -d $HOME/".local/bin" ] ; then
    export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
fi

rust_dyld=$HOME/.local/lib/rustlib/x86_64-apple-darwin/lib
if [ ! -d $rust_dyld ] ;
    rust_dyld=$HOME/.local/lib/rustlib/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/lib
fi

if [ -d $rust_dyld ] ; then
    if [ -z $DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH ] ; then
        export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$rust_dyld
    else
        export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$rust_dyld:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH
    fi
fi

unset rust_dyld

Note: Take a look at lines 5 to 8. You should check whether either of these two directories actually exists. If not, you have to modify those lines accordingly.

If you are using fish, put this into $HOME/.config/fish/config.fish instead:

if test -d $HOME/.local/bin
    set -gx PATH $HOME/.local/bin $PATH
end

set -l rust_dyld $HOME/.local/lib/rustlib/x86_64-apple-darwin/lib
if test ! -d $rust_dyld
    set rust_dyld $HOME/.local/lib/rustlib/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/lib
end

if test -d $rust_dyld
    set -gx DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH $rust_dyld $DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH
end

Now we need to tell man where to find the manual pages. Add the following line to $HOME/.manpath:

MANPATH_MAP /Users/martin/.local/bin    /Users/martin/.local/share/man

Finally, start a new terminal session and try the following:

rustc --version
man rustc

If you later want to upgrade to the latest nightly, just rerun rustup.sh (like above):

curl -s https://static.rust-lang.org/rustup.sh | sh -s -- --prefix=$HOME/.local