RustRover 2026.1: AI Assistant, Cargo Workspace, Better Debugger

RustRover 2026.1 Released

JetBrains has released RustRover 2026.1, the latest update to its dedicated Rust IDE. This release focuses on three pillars: AI-assisted coding, cargo workspace improvements, and debugger UX.

AI Assistant Integration

RustRover 2026.1 ships with JetBrains AI Assistant built in (no plugin required). Key AI features:

• Inline code completion — context-aware, trained on Rust code including idiomatic patterns (ownership, lifetimes, traits)
• Explain this — right-click any code block for a plain-English explanation, including borrow checker errors
• Fix with AI — one-click fix suggestions for compiler errors, Clippy warnings, and common anti-patterns
• Chat — ask questions about your codebase directly in the IDE sidebar

The AI assistant uses JetBrains' own models as well as optional integrations with OpenAI and Anthropic APIs.

Full Cargo Workspace Support

Previous RustRover versions had partial workspace support. 2026.1 delivers:

• Unified project view — all workspace members shown in a single tree
• Cross-crate navigation — go-to-definition, find usages, and rename refactoring work across crate boundaries
• Per-member run configurations — run, test, or benchmark individual workspace members without editing Cargo.toml
• Workspace-level cargo check — the background checker now covers all members, not just the open file's crate

# Example workspace layout fully supported in 2026.1
[workspace]
members = [
  "crates/api",
  "crates/core",
  "crates/cli",
]

Macro Expansion Viewer

Rust macros have always been a pain point for IDE support. RustRover 2026.1 adds a Macro Expansion panel:

• Expand any macro invocation inline or in a dedicated panel
• Syntax-highlighted expansion output with clickable tokens
• Works with declarative macros (macro_rules!) and proc-macros

// Hover over derive(Debug) → click "Expand Macro"
#[derive(Debug, Clone, PartialEq)]
struct Point {
    x: f64,
    y: f64,
}
// → see the generated impl blocks in the expansion panel

Debugger Improvements

The debugger received a full UX overhaul:

• Inline variable values displayed directly in the editor gutter
• Pretty-printers for standard library types: Vec, HashMap, Option, Result, String
• Async stack traces — proper frame unwinding for tokio and async-std async tasks
• Conditional breakpoints with Rust expression support

Clippy Integration

Clippy lints now appear in the editor as you type (not just on save):

• Lint severity matches Clippy's own classification (error, warning, info)
• Click-to-apply quick fixes for clippy::needless_collect, clippy::map_unwrap_or, and 200+ other lints
• Custom clippy.toml settings respected

Performance

Indexing performance improved substantially compared to 2025.3:

Getting Started

RustRover 2026.1 is available via the JetBrains Toolbox App. A 30-day free trial is available; after that it requires an active JetBrains subscription.

# Install via JetBrains Toolbox CLI
jetbrains-toolbox install rustrover

For teams already using CLion with the Rust plugin, JetBrains recommends migrating to RustRover for the improved Rust-specific performance and feature depth.