cargo playground

Cargo playground opens a local playground in the editor of your choice.

Install

You can install it directly using cargo

$ cargo install --git https://github.com/Lutetium-Vanadium/cargo-playground

Or clone the project and then install

$ git clone https://github.com/Lutetium-Vanadium/cargo-playground
$ cd cargo-playground
$ cargo install --path .

cargo-playground on crates.io was already registered to someone else as a dummy project, and is not this project. Please install only using the above methods.

Usage

A few examples:

# Create a new playground
$ cargo playground new -n test-playground rand

# List existing playgrounds
$ cargo playground ls

# Open an existing playground
$ cargo playground open -e vim -a=-o2 test-playground

Environment variables

The following environment variables are used:

• VISUAL: The editor in which to open the playground. It is required unless --editor is given

• CARGO_PLAYGROUND_DIR: The path to the directory which is used for creating playgrounds. If not set, the temp directory is used. eg: in unix: /tmp/cargo-playground/

cargo playground new

This creates and opens a new playground.

It has the following options and flags:

 -g, --gui             Indicates the editor is a GUI based
 --no-w                Do not pass -w flag when opening GUI editor
 -n, --name <name>     The name of the playground. By default it is
                       generated from the current timestamp
 -e, --editor <editor> The editor to open the project in. By default it
                       is taken from the VISUAL env variable.
 -a, --args <args>...  Args to be given to be supplied to the editor.

It also takes a list of dependencies in the following formats:

1. <dep-name> eg: "rand"
2. <dep-name> = <dep-version> eg: "rand = 0.7"

   <dep-version> should not have quotes

cargo playground open

This opens a playground with the given name.

It has the following options and flags:

 -g, --gui             Indicates the editor is a GUI based
 --no-w                Do not pass -w flag when opening GUI editor
 -e, --editor <editor> The editor to open the project in. By default it
                       is taken from the VISUAL env variable.
 -a, --args <args>...  Args to be given to be supplied to the editor.

cargo playground ls

This lists all the playgrounds.

cargo playground clean

Deletes the Cargo projects in the playground directory.

It has the following options:

 -m, --matches <matches> A regex to match against playground names. If
                         not given all will be deleted.

Support

• Terminal based editor + tmux: It opens a pane to the right which has the output process, and the editor will be open to the left. When the editor is closed, the playground will be closed.

• GUI based editors: This requires the extra flag -g/--gui. It shows the output process in the main terminal and opens the editor.

  Any output from the editor to stdout/stdin will be ignored and not shown.

  For example:

  # Creates a new playground with vscode as editor
  $ cargo playground new -ge code
  #                        ^^^^^^-- not required if VISUAL is set to code
  

  I have noticed that cli openers for gui programs exit instantly and require a -w flag to make it wait. As such opening with gui editors automatically supplies a -w flag. In case your editor doesn't behave this way, use the --no-w flag to disable it.

If you want to add specific for some editor or environment feel free to open a PR!

Credits to Sergey Potalov and his post Rust Playground At Your Fingertips for the inspiration!