Rust Programming Best Practices Handbook

This book is complementary to the Rust Official API Guidelines:

• Rust Official API Guidelines

As another source of reference, the Rust Analyzer Style Guide should also be used:

• Rust Analyzer Style Guide

Summary

• Chapter 1 - Coding Style and Idioms
  • Borrowing Over Cloning
  • When to pass by value?
  • Handling Option and Result<T, E>
  • Prevent Early Allocation
  • Iterator, .iter vs for
  • Comments: Context, not Clutter
  • Use Declarations - "imports"
• Chapter 2 - Clippy and Linting Discipline
  • Why care about linting?
  • Always run cargo clippy
  • Important Clippy Lints to Respect
  • Fix warnings, don't silence them!
  • Configure workspace/package lints
• Chapter 3 - Performance Mindset
  • Cargo Flamegraph
  • Avoid Redundant Cloning
  • Stack vs. Heap: Be size-smart!
  • Iterators and Zero-Cost Abstractions
• Chapter 4 - Errors and Results
  • Prefer Result, avoid panic
  • Avoid unwrap/expect in Production
  • thiserror for Crate Level Errors
  • Reserve anyhow for Binaries
  • Use ? to Bubble Errors
  • Unit Tests should exercise errors
  • Important Topics
• Chapter 5 - Automated Testing
  • Tests as Living Documentation
  • Add Test Examples to your Docs
  • Unit Test vs Integration Tests vs Doc tests
  • How to assert!
  • Snapshot Testing with cargo insta
  • Snapshot Best Practices
• Chapter 6 - Generics, Dynamic Dispatch and Static Dispatch
  • Generics
  • Static Dispatch: impl Trait or <T: Trait>
  • Dynamic Dispatch: dyn Trait
  • Trade-off summary
  • Best Practices for Dynamic Dispatch
  • Trait Objects Ergonomics
• Chapter 7 - Type State Pattern
  • What is Type State Pattern?
  • Why use it?
  • Simple Example: File State
  • Real-World Examples
  • Pros and Cons
• Chapter 8 - Comments vs Documentation
  • Comments vs Documentation: Know the Difference
  • When to use comments
  • When comments get in the way
  • Don't Write Living Documentation (living comments)
  • Replace Comments with Code
  • TODO should become issues
  • When to use doc comments
  • Documentation in Rust: How, When and Why
  • Checklist for Documentation coverage
• Chapter 9 - Understanding Pointers
  • Thread Safety
  • When to use pointers
• Final Notes