Using Rust Cargo TOML variables within VSCode? - visual-studio-code

Question

I need to prepare a number of exercises for students learning Rust. I've found the use of ${workspaceFolderBasename} within the program field of my launch.json to be quite useful, as in:
"program": "${workspaceFolder}/target/debug/${workspaceFolderBasename}.exe"
This allows me to execute the program using CTRL+F5. However, this only works while the resulting executable has the same name as the workspace folder (i.e. ${workspaceFolderBasename}). I note that the name field in my project's Cargo.toml file has a name field under [package] which controls the name of the resulting executable. Is there a way to use this field within launch.json?

Answer 1

I want to propose a different approach. What if you define cargo run as a task in your tasks.json with a shortcut and let cargo handle the naming. That also has the advantage that, if students make a change ,cargo will compile it automatically when running cargo run.
This is how to do it:
Create a .vscode folder on project directory.
Create a tasks.json file in it.
In the tasks.json file, my content is like this:
{
// See https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=733558
// for the documentation about the tasks.json format
"version": "2.0.0",
"tasks": [
{
"label": "run",
"type": "shell",
"command": "cargo run",
"problemMatcher": []
}
]
}
Now when you run the command tasks: run task on the command palette, you will see a new task called run. Clicking it will run cargo run on the workspace folder.
The documentation can be found in https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/tasks .
Sidenote: I checked the VsCode Rust Plugin and it seems that they already have that functionality, so just let your students install that extension and they can run all the cargo tasks without doing the above steps.