If you are new to Rust, choose Rust Stable over Nightly to make your life and other people’s lives simple – may apply to both crate producers and consumers. There are three types of Rust compiler – Nightly, Beta, and Stable. Before Rust 1.0, people would use the very recent nightly version by default.
You can re-run this script any time you want to update Rust. Which, at this point, is often. Rust is still pre-1.0, and so people assume that you’re using a very recent Rust.
Everything has changed since Rust 1.0, where stability became one of its deliverables via the Stable releases. Rust has adopted a “channel” system used by many other projects such as Firefox, Chrome, and Ember.js. In Rust’s case – Stable, Beta, and Nightly channels.
Here are the reasons why you should choose Rust Stable over Nightly (even Beta).
Rust Stable Does Not Break As Much As Nightly
Unlike Rust Nightly, Stable does not break as much. It has features planned for and even tested during Beta. Therefore, the codes go through stages of validation, and features do not just disappear overnight without due consultation. Also, Rust Stable codes are not from the master git branch where most development happens.
Organizations Are Using Rust Stable In Production
Organizations that run businesses need stable production applications. Is Rust production-ready? Yes, as long as you stick with “stable” features and crates (and their dependencies) that rely on Rust Stable.
Features in Rust Stable Are Not Meant To Be Experimental
Features in Rust Stable are planned for and tested during Beta. These are no-longer experimental, and developers have refined these features in Nightly or even Beta before moving to Stable.
Rustup Defaults to Stable
Rustup is an installer for Rust. It is configured to use the stable channel by default, which represents the latest release of Rust, and is released every six weeks.
