Rust Faster Compile Times

See Tips for Faster Rust Compile Times for details.

Summary of tips:

• Keep rust updated
• cargo check to just check without compiling
• Remove unused depenencies, use simpler dependencies, remove unused features
• cargo build --timings for find slow crate and profile compilation
• Switch to simpler dependencies
• Use workspaces to split big crates and related workspace tools
• Use features to split up code in a crate
• Cache dependencies, including using CI or remote servers - see below on sccache
• Alternative compilers, linkers, and running tests
• Compilation, debugging environment variables
• OS specific development settings, in memory file system, better hardware or offload to remote
• Code specific use and optimization
• Container layer caching, see cargo-chef
• IDE, development environment optimizations

When and why to use Rust dependency caching

For when to use a rust dependency cache like sccache for caching see Why you need sccache.

In short: you need sccache if you are frequently swapping between branches with similar (but not identical) dependencies or expect to frequently delete Rust’s disk cache.