Is it possible to write Rust on a low end system? (lemmy.today)

submitted 22 hours ago by silly_goose@lemmy.today to c/rust@programming.dev

22 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Rust analyzer and compilation are very slow. My system is heating up, running out of ram and disk space. I have 8 GB ram.

I use helix editor.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] TehPers@beehaw.org 2 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

8GB RAM isn't a small amount (though by no means a lot). As far as RAM usage goes, the amount you need will scale with project+dependencies size, so for smaller projects, it shouldn't be a problem at all.

8GB RAM doesn't tell us about the rest of your system though. What CPU do you have? Is your storage slow? Performance is affected by a lot of factors. A slow CPU will naturally run programs slower, fewer hardware threads means less running in parallel, and slower storage means that reading incremental build data and writing it could be a bottleneck.

[-] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 1 points 17 hours ago

8 GB is a really small amount. Even phones have had that much RAM for several years. The average desktop I built in 2012 had 16 GB of RAM.

Plenty of modern computers only come with a small amount of RAM, because most people only need a small amount, but 8 GB is still a small amount.

[-] TehPers@beehaw.org 1 points 15 hours ago

"Small amount" is relative here. Not everybody needs to play Battlefield 6.

For just programming, 8GB is way more than enough. Even my old work laptop had only 8GB and the issues didn't show up until I had multiple Office products + Teams + a browser open, not from any of my dev software.

[-] robinm@fosstodon.org 2 points 9 hours ago

@TehPers @FizzyOrange "old laptop" RAM usage scale heavily with core count. Modern CPU have much more core, and thus RAM is much more useful for compiling nowadays

[-] silly_goose@lemmy.today 3 points 21 hours ago

My system has a midrange amd cpu with 6 cores. I have an ssd.

I think the issue has to do with procedural macros in maud. The project is about 1000 dependencies and 10k loc.

Combined with tailwind classes and a complex ui, the templates get bloated. I have to test this theory.

[-] sga@piefed.social 4 points 18 hours ago

1000 dependencies

that is too much. i use something with 900ish, and even withh cached builds, it takes like 20 mins, we just have too much linking going on

[-] TehPers@beehaw.org 5 points 17 hours ago

Couldn't agree more here, 1k dependencies would take a while to build even on my 9950x3d if only due to linking.

It seems to me like the the issue is the project is either too bloated, or large enough to justify a workstation build. Breaking it into smaller, independent parts would also help here.