Faster Rust Testing at Scale: cargo-nextest in Practice
cargo-nextest is a next-generation test runner for Rust designed to improve speed and observability, especially in large codebases and CI pipelines. It offers features like test retries, process isolation, and run recording to enhance developer experience and debugging. RustRover 2026.1 now includes native support, allowing developers to run and monitor tests directly within the IDE.
- ▪cargo-nextest can be up to three times faster than cargo test depending on the project and workload.
- ▪It runs each test in its own process, improving test isolation and reducing interference from shared state.
- ▪The tool supports run recording, enabling developers to inspect CI test runs locally for better debugging.
- ▪cargo-nextest is widely used in both open source and large industry Rust projects for its reliability and performance.
- ▪RustRover 2026.1 introduced native integration with cargo-nextest for improved in-IDE testing workflows.
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RustRover Focus on what matters Follow Follow: X X Download All News Releases LiveStream RustRover Faster Rust Testing at Scale: cargo-nextest in Practice Irina Mihajlovic Disclaimer: This article was created using AI-based writing and communication companions. With its help, the core topics of this rich and nuanced livestream were distilled into a compact blog post format. In our recent JetBrains livestream, Vitaly Bragilevsky was joined by Rain, the creator of cargo-nextest, for a conversation about Rust testing, developer tools, open source maintenance, and the everyday developer experience around large Rust projects. cargo-nextest is widely used across the Rust ecosystem as a next-generation test runner.
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