Rust General Questions

[newpavlov]

IANAL, but if you use it for commercial software development, then de jure... Yes, you have to:

Use lld by default on Windows to mitigate Microsoft C++ Build Tools licencing issues

Rust needs a platform-specific linker to produce executables. On Windows the default is Microsoft C++ Built Tools, which is a standalone MSVC toolchain without requiring a full Visual Studio installation. Nonetheless it may still be regarded a part of Visual Studio, which is a proprietary product. Visual Studio is free under Community licence but almost all companies would have to pay for Pro or Enterprise licences. The licencing situation of Microsoft C++ Build Tools has long been murky (just…

At least as long as Rust uses link.exe. For open source development, you should be able to use the Community edition.