Rust: Cargo Init vs Cargo New Command

The cargo new Command

The cargo new command is used to create a new Rust project as a new directory.

Example: cargo new

% cargo new myproj1

     Created binary (application) `myproj1` package

% cd myproj1 

% ls -l

total 8
-rw-r--r--  1 c2ctechtv  staff  176 Jul 18 23:27 Cargo.toml
drwxr-xr-x  3 c2ctechtv  staff   96 Jul 18 23:27 src

The cargo new command generated the directory for the project as well as the Cargo.toml file as well as the source folder containing main.rs file.

The cargo init Command

The cargo init command is used to initialize an existing directory as a Rust project. You can think of it as a git init command.

Example: cargo init

% mkdir myproj2

% cd myproj2 

% cargo init
     Created binary (application) package

% ls -l
total 8
-rw-r--r--  1 c2ctechtv  staff  176 Jul 18 23:34 Cargo.toml
drwxr-xr-x  3 c2ctechtv  staff   96 Jul 18 23:34 src
Code2care@Mac % 

As you can see, I created a folder named myproj2 first then did a cd followed by cargo init this generated the directory for the project as well as the Cargo.toml file as well as the source folder containing main.rs file.