Rust FAQ

The latest stable version of Rust is 1.93.1. There are currently 1 actively supported versions and 64 versions that have reached end of life. Visit the Rust Version Tracker on ReleaseRun for a complete breakdown of all versions, including release dates, support timelines, and end-of-life dates.

Rust follows a 6-week release train. A new stable version is released every 6 weeks, with beta and nightly channels running ahead. This means roughly 8-9 stable releases per year. Each release is relatively small in scope compared to languages with annual releases.

MSRV stands for Minimum Supported Rust Version. It is the oldest Rust compiler version that a crate guarantees to work with. Library authors set MSRV in Cargo.toml using rust-version = "1.XX". This helps users who cannot immediately upgrade their Rust toolchain know which crate versions they can use.

Rust editions (2015, 2018, 2021, 2024) allow the language to make breaking changes in a controlled way. Each edition is opt-in per crate via edition = "2024" in Cargo.toml. All editions can interoperate: a 2024-edition crate can depend on 2015-edition crates and vice versa. The compiler supports all editions simultaneously.

Use stable for production code and most development. Beta is useful for CI testing to catch breakage before the next stable release. Nightly is needed only if you use unstable features (behind feature flags) or tools that require nightly, like some versions of miri or specific procedural macros.

Run 'rustup update stable' to upgrade to the latest stable version. Rust's backward compatibility means upgrades almost never break existing code. If you use a specific toolchain for CI, update your rust-toolchain.toml file. Check the release notes for new features and lints that may produce new warnings.