curl -fsSL https://nail.alex-wilkinson.ca/install | sudo sh

# Opens the file in Nail's own IDE
nail hello.nail

Install this and stop. nail is a launcher: it reads the version on a file's first line, fetches exactly that version, keeps them side by side and hands the file to the right one. Nothing below this line is something you should have to do. Get started has the rest.

Why sudo?

Because these files carry every dependency already compiled, and compiled code is only reusable at the path it was built at. Cargo decides that by fingerprints holding absolute paths, so a toolchain unpacked somewhere else throws its own cache away and recompiles five hundred crates the first time you build anything. One fixed path, /opt/nail, is what makes the download honest. The store is handed to whoever ran the install, so nothing after it needs root, and sudo rm -rf /opt/nail /usr/local/bin/nail removes it. The longer answer covers what else one path buys and what it costs.

A version, by name

Same fetch, you just say when.

nail install 0.1.0

A version, as a file

For the machine with no network. Download it here, carry it over, install it from the file. You never unpack it yourself, and the name does not matter: nail reads the version out of the file.

nail import nail-0.1.0-linux-x86_64.tar.xz

Each one is a whole toolchain, compiler and editor and Rust and every library already built, which is why they are large and why nothing else has to be on the machine. Linux x86_64, on a glibc distribution (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch). The programs you build are static binaries and run anywhere, including in empty containers. Versions before 1.0 may be withdrawn.