Getting started

If you haven’t already, install Rust.

Next, lets make a new crate and add rand as a dependency:

cargo new randomly
cd randomly
cargo add rand --features small_rng

Now, paste the following into src/main.rs:

extern crate rand;
use rand::prelude::*;

fn main() {
    let mut rng = rand::rng();

    println!("Random die roll: {}", rng.random_range(1..=6));
    println!("Random UUID: 0x{:X}", rng.random::<u128>());

    if rng.random() {
        println!("You got lucky!");
    }
}

Now lets go!

$ cargo run
   Compiling [..]
    Finished `dev` profile [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.99s
     Running `target/debug/randomly`
Random die roll: 4
Random UUID: 0xEC3936A465339F8295EE11AB853CCDBF
You got lucky!

Other crates

Some other crates are used by this guide. When needed, you can either edit the [dependencies] section of your Cargo.toml or use cargo add:

$ cargo add rand_distr
    Updating crates.io index
      Adding rand_distr v0.4.3 to dependencies
             Features:
             + alloc
             + std
             - serde
             - serde1
             - std_math
    Updating crates.io index