Closing the Nix Gap: From Environments to Packaged Applications for Rust

Closing the Nix Gap: From Environments to Packaged Applications for Rust

Should I use crate2nix, cargo2nix, or naersk for packaging my Rust application? — (@jvmncs) January 21, 2025

This tweet shows a common problem in Nix: "Should I use crate2nix, cargo2nix, or naersk for packaging my Rust application?"

devenv solved this for development environments differently: instead of making developers package everything with Nix, we provide tools through a simple languages.rust.enable . You get cargo , rustc , and rust-analyzer in your shell without understanding Nix packaging.

But when you're ready to deploy, you face the same problem: which lang2nix tool should you use? Developers don't want to compare crate2nix vs cargo2nix vs naersk vs crane —they want a tested solution that works.

devenv now provides languages.rust.import , which packages Rust applications using crate2nix. We evaluated the available tools and chose crate2nix, so you don't have to.

We've done this before. In PR #1500, we replaced fenix with rust-overlay for Rust toolchains because rust-overlay was better maintained. Users didn't need to change anything—devenv handled the transition while keeping the same languages.rust.enable = true interface.

One Interface for All Languages

The typical workflow:

Development: Enable the language ( languages.rust.enable = true ) to get tools like cargo , rustc , and rust-analyzer . Packaging: When ready to deploy, use languages.rust.import to package with Nix.

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