The missing link to use rust from WSL (Linux Susbsystem for Windows) from IntelliJ (and potentially also other IDEs) to achieve a cross compiling environment on Windows without the hassle of setting up an actual cross compiler (because the latter is depending on C cross toolchains which are currently all outdated for Windows->Linux and generally not recommended for real usage).

Caution: this is a hack really and is in desperate need of a more proper solution. But as long as it works.. why does it matter :)

Installation

git clone git@github.com:philippkeller/rustup-toolchain-proxy.git
cd rustup-toolchain-proxy
./install.ps1

This

installs the stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu toolchain (or updates if it is already installed)
installs cargo.exe, rustc.exe and rustup.exe into $HOME\.rustup\toolchains\stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu\bin\

Usage

Set your project as linux-gnu, pointing to the

cd my_rust_project
rustup rustup override set stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu

Currently the following works in IntelliJ (tested on my laptop only, please file PRs/bug requests):

first time loading a project in IntelliJ discovers the correct toolchain
refresh Cargo makes IntelliJ understand the code structure and e.g. displays play icons next to main() or test functions
the line numbers in compiler errors are clickable

What does not work yet:

colors (probably needs some "tty" support or whatever windows calls this)
environment variables which IntelliJ sets, e.g. RUST_BACKTRACE are not set within bash

How it works

This takes into account the proxy characteristics of rustup itself. Basically that's the chain of commands:

IntelliJ runs cargo.exe (or rustc.exe)
rustup (which is a proxy really) checks active toolchain (rustup show) and runs cargo.exe lying in $HOME\.rustup\toolchains\stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu\bin\
the cargo.exe in this toolchain is again a proxy which executes bash.exe -c "cargo ..." and outputs stdout/stderr, plus does translate the linux paths from e.g. "/home/linux_user/..." to: "C:\Users\windows_user\AppData\Local\lxss\home\linux_user.."

philippkeller/rustup-toolchain-proxy

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