Basic usage

The rustup command-line has a built-in help system that provides more information about each command. Run rustup help for an overview. Detailed help for each subcommand is also available. For example, run rustup toolchain install --help for specifics on installing toolchains.

Keeping Rust up to date

Rust is distributed on three different release channels: stable, beta, and nightly. rustup is configured to use the stable channel by default, which represents the latest release of Rust, and is released every six weeks.

When a new version of Rust is released, you can type rustup update to update to it:

$ rustup update
info: syncing channel updates for 'stable'
info: downloading component 'rustc'
info: downloading component 'rust-std'
info: downloading component 'rust-docs'
info: downloading component 'cargo'
info: installing component 'rustc'
info: installing component 'rust-std'
info: installing component 'rust-docs'
info: installing component 'cargo'
info: checking for self-updates
info: downloading self-updates

  stable updated: rustc 1.7.0 (a5d1e7a59 2016-02-29)

This is the essence of rustup.

Keeping rustup up to date

Running rustup update also checks for updates to rustup and automatically installs the latest version. To manually check for updates and install the latest version of rustup without updating installed toolchains type rustup self update:

$ rustup self update
info: checking for self-updates
info: downloading self-updates

Note: rustup will automatically update itself at the end of any toolchain installation as well. You can prevent this automatic behaviour by passing the --no-self-update argument when running rustup update or rustup toolchain install.