Rust Application Guide

Learn Rust by building a real application: a personal finance tracker system.

This repository contains an mdBook guide that walks through Rust application development from the fundamentals to a working multi-interface finance app:

• core finance logic with ledger-core;
• command line entry with moneylog;
• statement imports;
• terminal UI with moneylog-tui;
• HTTP backend with budget-api;
• database persistence;
• desktop app with moneylog-desktop;
• browser app with budget-web;
• analysis and release verification.

The book is a guide, not a full line-by-line tutorial. Each stage explains the goal, prerequisites, design choices, useful crates, verification checks, and what a beginner-friendly first version should do.

Read Locally

Install mdBook:

cargo install mdbook --locked

Serve the book:

mdbook serve

Then open http://localhost:3000.

Repository Layout

.
  book.toml                 # mdBook configuration
  src/                      # book chapters
  VERSION                   # current guide version
  CHANGELOG.md              # release notes
  .github/workflows/        # GitHub Pages deployment workflow

The generated book/ directory is intentionally ignored. Build it with mdbook build.

Versioning

This guide uses semantic versioning. The current version is stored in VERSION.

• MAJOR: breaking changes to the guide structure or app contracts.
• MINOR: new chapters, stages, app contracts, or verification templates.
• PATCH: typo fixes, link fixes, clarifications, and small corrections.

See CHANGELOG.md for release notes.

GitHub Pages

The repository includes a GitHub Pages workflow at .github/workflows/pages.yml.

After pushing to GitHub, configure Pages to use GitHub Actions as the source. The workflow will build the mdBook and publish the book/ output.