CARGO-ADD(1)

📦 version 1.76.0, in ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble

CARGO-ADD(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the General Commands Manual section for cargo-add — yes it's a real thing and yes it's about to become your whole personality ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

cargo-add — the little command that adds dependencies to a Cargo.toml manifest file. that's it. that's the job. and it EATS 💅

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

cargo add [options] crate…
cargo add [options] --path path
cargo add [options] --git url [crate…]

like. three whole moods. pick one 🦋

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so this command adds or modifies dependencies. that's the vibe. you want a crate in your project? boom. it's in the manifest.

the source for the dependency can be specified with:

  • crate@version: fetch from a registry with a version constraint of "version"
  • --path path: fetch from the specified path
  • --git url: pull from a git repo at url

and if you don't specify a source? don't stress, bestie — it'll make a best effort to pick one for you, including:

  • existing dependencies in other tables (like dev-dependencies)
  • workspace members
  • latest release in the registry

when you add a package that's already present, the existing entry gets updated with the flags you specified. no duplicates, no drama, we love a clean update 😌

and upon successful invocation, the enabled (+) and disabled (-) features — over at <https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/features.html> — of the dependency you named will be listed right there in the command's output. so you can see exactly what you got. iconic.

👑 OPTIONS 👑

🌈 Source options 🌈

💜 Section options 💜

to avoid unexpected shell expansions, you may use quotes around each target, e.g., --target 'cfg(unix)'. yes bestie, the quotes are load-bearing 😭

🦋 Dependency options 🦋

⚠️ this option is unstable and available only on the nightly channel (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/appendix-07-nightly-rust.html>) and requires the -Z unstable-options flag to enable. see <https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/5579> for more information. so like, don't come crying to me if it yells at you on stable 🫶

💅 Display Options 💅

  • -v, --verbose — use verbose output. may be specified twice for "very verbose" output which includes extra output such as dependency warnings and build script output. may also be specified with the term.verbose config value. (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html>)
  • -q, --quiet — do not print cargo log messages. may also be specified with the term.quiet config value. (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html>)
  • --color when — control when colored output is used. valid values:
    • auto (default): automatically detect if color support is available on the terminal.
    • always: always display colors.
    • never: never display colors.

may also be specified with the term.color config value. (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html>)

🍓 Manifest Options 🍓

  • --manifest-path path — path to the Cargo.toml file. by default, Cargo searches for the Cargo.toml file in the current directory or any parent directory. it'll go hunting 🔍
  • -p spec, --package spec — add dependencies to only the specified package.
  • --frozen, --locked — either of these flags requires that the Cargo.lock file is up-to-date. if the lock file is missing, or it needs to be updated, Cargo will exit with an error. the --frozen flag also prevents Cargo from attempting to access the network to determine if it is out-of-date.

these may be used in environments where you want to assert that the Cargo.lock file is up-to-date (such as a CI build) or want to avoid network access.

  • --offline — prevents Cargo from accessing the network for any reason. without this flag, Cargo will stop with an error if it needs to access the network and the network is not available. with this flag, Cargo will attempt to proceed without the network if possible.
⚠️ beware that this may result in different dependency resolution than online mode. Cargo will restrict itself to crates that are downloaded locally, even if there might be a newer version as indicated in the local copy of the index. see the cargo-fetch(1) command to download dependencies before going offline. fr fr, prep first.

may also be specified with the net.offline config value. (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html>)

⭐ Common Options ⭐

  • +toolchain — if Cargo has been installed with rustup, and the first argument to cargo begins with +, it will be interpreted as a rustup toolchain name (such as +stable or +nightly). see the rustup documentation (<https://rust-lang.github.io/rustup/overrides.html>) for more information about how toolchain overrides work.
  • --config KEY=VALUE or PATH — overrides a Cargo configuration value. the argument should be in TOML syntax of KEY=VALUE, or provided as a path to an extra configuration file. this flag may be specified multiple times. see the command-line overrides section (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html#command-line-overrides>) for more information.
  • -C PATH — changes the current working directory before executing any specified operations. this affects things like where cargo looks by default for the project manifest (Cargo.toml), as well as the directories searched for discovering .cargo/config.toml, for example. this option must appear before the command name, for example cargo -C path/to/my-project build.
⚠️ this option is only available on the nightly channel (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/appendix-07-nightly-rust.html>) and requires the -Z unstable-options flag to enable (see #10098 <https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/10098>).
  • -h, --help — prints help information.
  • -Z flag — unstable (nightly-only) flags to Cargo. run cargo -Z help for details.

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

see the reference (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/environment-variables.html>) for details on environment variables that Cargo reads. it's a whole thing, iykyk 🧚

💖 EXIT STATUS 💖

  1. 0: Cargo succeeded. 🎉 slay
  2. 101: Cargo failed to complete. 💀

🦋 EXAMPLES 🦋

  1. add regex as a dependency
cargo add regex
  1. add trybuild as a dev-dependency
cargo add --dev trybuild
  1. add an older version of nom as a dependency
cargo add nom@5
  1. add support for serializing data structures to json with derives
cargo add serde serde_json -F serde/derive
  1. add windows as a platform specific dependency on cfg(windows)
cargo add windows --target 'cfg(windows)'

🌸 SEE ALSO 🌸

cargo(1), cargo-remove(1) — the besties of this page 🫶

okay and that's the whole page, babe!! this was the cargo-add(1) entry from the General Commands Manual — the same CARGO-ADD(1) you'd see stamped at the top and bottom of the boring version. mwah 💋 go add some dependencies, you got this 👑✨💜

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