Linker Errors

C and C++ requires you supply a list of all the .obj files that form part of your library or executable.

If you omit a file by accident you will get undefined or missing references. Maintaining this list of files is an additional burden of development, ensuring to update your makefile or solution every time you add a file to your project.

How Rust Helps

Rust includes everything in your library / executable that is directly or indirectly referenced by mod commands, starting from your toplevel lib.rs or main.rs and working all the way down.

Providing you reference a module, it will be automatically built and linked into your binary.

If you use the cargo command, then the above also applies for external crates that you link with. The cargo command will also check for version conflicts between external libraries. If you find your cargo generating errors about compatibility conflicts between crates you may be able to resolve them by updating the Cargo.lock file like so:

cargo update