Is there any way to rename a Cargo project?

Question

I created a project using: cargo new projectname --bin. How do I change projectname to some other name?

I checked the man page and the Cargo documentation. I also ran:

• cargo help
• cargo --list
• man cargo

In the metadata files (Cargo.toml, Cargo.lock, ...), there is "name" and "path". I suppose I could change them manually, but I don't know if that would break anything.

What would be the best way to do this?

Answer 1

I think that you should change it manually. Not so difficult, really.

I run this code:

$ cargo new smurf --bin
     Created binary (application) `smurf` project
$ cd smurf/
smurf$ cargo build
     ....
smurf$ grep -rl smurf .
./target/debug/smurf.d
./target/debug/smurf
./target/debug/.fingerprint/smurf-35f069edf7faaa12/bin-smurf-35f069edf7faaa12.json
./target/debug/.fingerprint/smurf-35f069edf7faaa12/dep-bin-smurf-35f069edf7faaa12
./target/debug/deps/smurf-35f069edf7faaa12
./Cargo.lock
./Cargo.toml

From all these files, the whole target may be just deleted. The .lock file can also be deleted. And the Cargo.toml... well you can just edit it.

I tried changing only the Cargo.toml and all just works. However you end up with useless files in target so I recommend deleting those anyway.

Answer 2

Under Linux this is fairly strait forward:

• go to the directory where your project is located e.g. if your project was called hello_world in a folder named rust then go to the rust folder pi@raspberrypi:~/workspace/rust/hello_world $ cd ..
• from there you can rename the project by
  1. mv [current name of the project] [name you want] to move. E.g. if I wanted to rename it from hello_world to hello_rust I would type mv hello_world/ hello_rust/ to rename the folder.
  2. now you only have to change the name in your Cargo.toml file:
     • pi@raspberrypi:~/workspace/rust $ cd hello_rust/
     • pi@raspberrypi:~/workspace/rust/hello_rust $ geany Cargo.toml
     • (I am using geany but you can use whatever text editor you like)
     • in Cargo.toml in the second line change
     • name = "hello_world" to name = "hello_rust"

Hope that this might help someone in the future