[steveklabnik]

Cargo can work offline. It’s a requirement of the Firefox and Debian build systems, for example.

You can also use rustc without cargo if you really want, but Cargo is really good, so I don’t particularly recommend it.

[mrbonner]

Does that mean it only needs internet for the first build. And then, subsequent builds won’t need internet connection (if I don’t add new dependencies, of course), kind of like Maven?

[sanxiyn]

No, you can do everything, including the first build, offline.

[mrbonner]

Sorry, I should’ve been clearer: I need cargo to be online the 1st time so that it could resolve my dependencies for me online the 1st time because I don’t want to setup local repos and stuff. Thanks

[pitaj]

If you use dependencies from crates.io or other online sources, then yes you'd need to download those somehow. But that can be done separately, on an entirely different computer if you wanted.

[ucarion]

Yup, that works! It also downloads docs so you can `cargo doc` and then you can peruse the generated docs for all of your dependencies.

[steveklabnik]

To be clear, it downloads the source code, and then “cargo doc” builds them from the source.

[joseluis]

That's the usual way it's done.

It should be technically possible to replicate cargo's functionality by predownloading the dependencies and deploying them... Before actually needing them.

Nevertheless if you depend on any external crates you have to have access to them, even if only by referencing a local path.