JetBrains Releases RustRover IDE for Rust Developers

JetBrains, the software development company behind popular IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA and PyCharm, has officially released RustRover, a dedicated integrated development environment (IDE) for the Rust programming language. This marks a significant commitment to supporting Rust developers, who have long requested a robust, intelligent, and productivity-focused environment for the increasingly popular systems language. Rust, known for its performance and memory safety, has been voted the "most loved" programming language in Stack Overflow’s annual developer surveys for seven consecutive years. As adoption has grown in both systems and application-level development, so has the demand for tooling on par with other mature languages like C++, Java, and Python.

RustRover: Built for Performance & Safety

JetBrains developed RustRover with the goal of delivering a modern development experience tailored specifically to Rust's unique language features. Some of the IDE’s key highlights include:

• Advanced Code Completion and Navigation: Semantic code completion that understands Rust’s ownership, lifetimes, and type inference.
• Smart Refactorings: Rename, extract, and inline with full awareness of Rust’s borrowing rules.
• Inline Error Detection: Instantly highlights memory safety issues, unused variables, and type mismatches.
• Integrated Cargo Support: Full integration with Cargo for dependency management and build tasks.
• Debugger and Test Runner: Built-in LLDB/GDB support and test UI with support for Rust-specific testing frameworks.
• Cross-Platform Compatibility: Available on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

A New Era for Rust Tooling

Until now, Rust developers primarily relied on the Rust Language Server (RLS) or rust-analyzer within general-purpose editors like Visual Studio Code or Neovim. While effective for many, these setups required manual configuration and lacked the deeper project insights and productivity tools that JetBrains IDEs are known for. RustRover aims to change that. JetBrains has been working closely with the Rust community, including contributors to rust-analyzer, to ensure compatibility and performance. "The Rust ecosystem is growing rapidly, and we saw the need for a professional-grade IDE to match," said Andrey Breslav, Head of Languages at JetBrains. "RustRover is our commitment to supporting the systems developers of tomorrow."

Early Access and Feedback

RustRover is currently available in a public preview, with an official stable release expected later this year. JetBrains encourages Rust developers of all experience levels to download the preview and share feedback through GitHub or JetBrains' support channels. Community feedback so far has been largely positive, especially from those transitioning from VS Code. Many developers praised RustRover’s memory safety warnings and ability to navigate large codebases with ease.

Future Roadmap

JetBrains has outlined a roadmap for RustRover that includes:

• Integrated Static Analysis Tools
• Rust Macro Expansion Visualizer
• Crate Graph Visualizations
• Embedded Development Support
• WASM (WebAssembly) Tooling

The company also plans to explore AI-assisted coding features, possibly integrating with JetBrains’ own AI assistant infrastructure.

Implications for the Rust Ecosystem

The release of RustRover could further accelerate enterprise adoption of Rust. Larger teams looking to migrate from C/C++ to safer alternatives now have access to a professional-grade development tool, removing one of the primary barriers to entry. With Rust increasingly used in operating systems, embedded devices, browsers (e.g., Mozilla), and even blockchain, having a robust IDE tailored to its quirks is a critical step forward.