New editions of the "the book" - The Edition Guide

# New editions of the "the book"

for drafts of the second edition

for the final version of the second edition

for drafts of the 2018 edition

We've distributed a copy of "The Rust Programming Language," affectionately nicknamed "the book", with every version of Rust since Rust 1.0.

However, because it was written before Rust 1.0, it started showing its age. Many parts of the book are vague, because it was written before the true details were nailed down for the 1.0 release. It didn't do a fantastic job of teaching lifetimes.

Starting with Rust 1.18, we shipped drafts of a second edition of the book. The final version was shipped with Rust 1.26. The new edition is a complete re-write from the ground up, using the last two years of knowledge we’ve gained from teaching people Rust. You’ll find brand-new explanations for a lot of Rust’s core concepts, new projects to build, and all kinds of other good stuff. Please check it out and let us know what you think!

You can also purchase a dead-tree version from No Starch Press. Now that the print version has shipped, the second edition is frozen.

The names are a bit confusing though, because the "second edition" of the book is the first printed edition of the book. As such, we decided that newer editions of the book will correspond with newer editions of Rust itself, and so starting with 1.28, we've been shipping drafts of the next version, the 2018 Edition. It's still pretty close to the second edition, but contains information about newer features since the book's content was frozen. We'll be continuing to update this edition until we decide to print a second edition in paper.