Does cargo install have an equivalent update command?

Question

I'd like to update a package that I used cargo install to globally install packages, such as rustfmt or racer. I can't find a way to update an installed package without first deleting it (via cargo uninstall) and then running the install command again. Is there an update command?

Solution 1

As of Rust 1.41.0, you can use the following command to update crates to their latest version:

cargo install <crate>

This came from pull request #6798 (Add install-upgrade) and was stabilized in #7560 (Stabilize install-upgrade).

How does it work?

Instead of failing when cargo install detects a package is already installed, it will upgrade if the versions don't match, or do nothing (exit 0) if it is considered "up-to-date".

Forcing an upgrade / re-installation

The following command will always uninstall, download and compile the latest version of the crate - even if there's no newer version available. Under normal circumstances the install-upgrade feature should be preferred as it does save time and bandwidth if there's no new version of the crate.

cargo install --force <crate>

Documentation

Further information can be found in the GitHub issue rust-lang/cargo#6797 and in the official documentation chapter.

Solution 2

There is no such command in vanilla cargo (well, there's cargo install but that's for dependencies), but since cargo supports third-party subcommands there is an answer: the cargo-update crate.

Install as usual with cargo install cargo-update, then use cargo install-update -a to update all installed packages, for more usage information and examples see the cargo install-update manpage.

_{Disclaimer: am author}

Solution 3

A solution I've found is to add the --force flag to the install command. For example cargo install --force clippy. This will effectively re-install the latest version.

Solution 4

Here is a one-liner to update all installed Cargo crates, except those installed from a local folder:

cargo install $(cargo install --list | egrep '^[a-z0-9_-]+ v[0-9.]+:$' | cut -f1 -d' ')

Explanation:

• List installed packages
• Filter to lines which contain package names and versions, and exclude ones with filesystem paths
• Cut those lines to only include the package name
• cargo install with the resulting package names

Solution 5

Nope. You can discuss it in this issue.

View more solutions

Comments

[Vladimir Matveev]

Nope. You can discuss it in this issue.

[Ben Sandeen]

Thank you so much for this utility! It's fantastic! And this should be the accepted answer

[набиячлэвэли]

@BenSandeen Well, that's the general treatment answers that are a year late v0v

[rofrol]

needs cmake to be installed

[набиячлэвэли]

@rofrol As is clearly outlaid in the Installation sexion of the Manpage

[Monstieur]

Will this also compile them with nightly?

[Rag]

This is now stabilized, and the default behavior. You no longer need to use the nightly channel or provide the -Z install-upgrade argument. github.com/rust-lang/cargo/pull/7560

[David Bailey]

In recent versions of cargo, using --force is no longer necessary to update a crate

[Tom]

If you wish to update all packages a simple shell command such as cargo install --list | grep '^[a-zA-Z0-9_\-]* v[0-9.]*:$' | cut -d ' ' -f1 | xargs cargo install would suffice

[Herohtar]

Automatic upgrade does not seem to be the default behavior in Rust 1.55.0; I had wasm-pack 0.10.0 installed, but when I tried to update it to 0.10.1 using cargo install wasm-pack I got an error: error: binary 'wasm-pack' already exists in destination and had to use --force.

[Illia]

Thank you for an answer without external dependencies.

[leonheess]

InvalidOperation: Cannot run a document in the middle of a pipeline: C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\egrep. error: Using `cargo install` to install the binaries for the package in current working directory is no longer supported, use `cargo install --path .` instead. Use `cargo build` if you want to simply build the package.