Can't install Rust on Windows using recommended installer

help
1

I'm following the guide in the docs. I have installed Visual Studio Intaller and downloaded the rustup-init.exe.
When I launch the exe I get the following output:

The Cargo home directory is located at:

  C:\Users\user\.cargo\bin

This can be modified with the CARGO_HOME environment variable.

The cargo, rustc, rustup and other commands will be added to
Cargo's bin directory, located at:

  C:\Users\user\.cargo\bin\bin
                                                                                                                        
The Cargo home directory is located at:

  C:\Users\user\.cargo\bin

This can be modified with the CARGO_HOME environment variable.

The cargo, rustc, rustup and other commands will be added to
Cargo's bin directory, located at:

  C:\Users\user\.cargo\bin\bin

This path will then be added to your PATH environment variable by
modifying the HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Environment/PATH registry key.

You can uninstall at any time with rustup self uninstall and
these changes will be reverted.

But no user/.cargo folder is created and when I try to rustc --version I receive a The term 'rustc' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. error.

I can succesfully install rust on WSL2 in the same machine, and I have added C:\Users\user\.cargo\bin and C:\Users\user\.cargo\bin\bin to the Path variable of user

2

Have you restarted your system? The installer modifies the PATH env var, but this doesn't get applied until the next time you login afaik.

3

I tried with no success.
The installer didn't modify the PATH env var and I did manually and restarted once more time.

I think the problem here is that the installer doesn't create the .cargo directory either... when I install rust on WSL2 it is generated and it works properly

4

It looks like you set the CARGO_HOME env var. Maybe try unsetting it?

5

The variable is not set.
To be sure I also tried Env:CARGO_HOME in PowerShell and no output was provided.

It seems the same issue described in this SO question, but restarting didn't resolve it in my case... :confused:

6

Speculation: is your administrator account separate to your user account?

7

Nope, I only have one account

8

Do you have "invisible" directories visible on your machine? It seems unlikely that rustup-init is both failing to create the directory and to report an error resulting from it failing to do so. It's slightly more plausible that the directory is being treated as invisible.

How are you running rustup-init? If you're running it in a WSL shell, this will likely cause some very unexpected behavior. (Run it either from cmd, pwsh, or just clicking it from the non-WSL GUI.)

You can also try running from an elevated command prompt context to see if that has any impact. It's supposed to be unnecessary, but running in the "visual studio configured shell" might also be helpful. (I don't know how to actually launch them normally; they were auto discovered as Windows Terminal configurations for me.)

If you're an antivirus, see if it's logged anything w.r.t. the .cargo directory and/or rustup-init; the behavior of rustup-init (dropping a bunch of .exes on the filesystem) is commonly flagged as potentially malicious.

9

Thank you I got it!
I'm on windows and I was just clicking on the rust-init.exe file obtaining the result posted in the question.
I simply had to run the file from PowerShell as Administrator and now the installation works.

Thanks :slight_smile:

1 Like
10

You can mark the post as the answer to indicate the problem is resolved

Glad I could help, though it's certainly interesting that it was just falling silently...

11

I think I have seen at least two other cases of people having this problem: the information text printed twice and neither success nor error messages.

12

Yes this does seem to be a problem with console output rather than the installer but I've not been able to track down the issue (most because I can only sometimes reproduce it). This may be fixed in the next version of rustup (due to updated dependencies) but I'm not sure.

I would not really recommend running rustup-init as admin. It's designed to run with the default permissions of the current user.

13

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