Cargo

Cargo is Rust's official package manager and build tool for working with local crates and workspaces. It covers project scaffolding, dependency and manifest edits, builds, tests, installs, publishing, and registry or workspace inspection from one command surface.

• Create new crates and workspaces, add or remove dependencies, and inspect manifests or resolved dependency graphs.
• Build, check, run, test, document, and benchmark Rust packages with workspace, target, profile, and feature controls.
• Install binaries from crates.io, git, or local paths, and publish or manage packages on registries like crates.io.

• Good shell fit for Rust projects: most commands are non-interactive, accept explicit paths and flags, and return stable exit codes.
• cargo metadata, cargo locate-project, and --message-format json on build-style commands give agents structured project and compiler data for follow-up parsing.
• Output is not uniform across the whole CLI; many package and registry commands are still text-first, so automation often combines JSON-capable commands with targeted text parsing.

• Installing Cargo usually means installing the full Rust toolchain through rustup, not a standalone Cargo package.
• Behavior depends on the local toolchain, manifest, lockfile, and sometimes registry access, so reproducibility benefits from explicit versions and flags like --locked or --offline when relevant.