I don't doubt that the process is ultimately fairly easy, but it always looks easier from inside the bubble. You have to know that Cargo is part of Rust; what the best way to install it is on your system; what tooling you should use if you don't want headaches later; what to do if you don't want to or can't install system-level packages; what minimum versions of Rust and Cargo are assumed by application developers this week; what additional dependencies are required; etc.

It's my understanding that building Rust applications still requires a C toolchain, and packages are still going to be dependent on things like having the openssl dev headers/libraries installed. That's fine, that's normal for building software, but it's not as trivial as "just git-clone this Rust source repo and run one command and everything will work".

I'm certain I could get up and running quickly. I'm also certain I'd have to install a bunch of stuff and iterate past multiple roadblocks before I was actually able to build a Rust application. And finally I'm certain I could get Claude or Codex to do it all a lot faster than if I muddled through it myself for half an hour.