How to Cargo Install a Package With Additional Features

Meanwhile you may have heard that there are a couple of new CLI apps out there written in Rust - blazing fast and with additional features.

While I rarely use them, as I do not want to get used to tools, which are not available on all Linux machines I work on, I do use ripgrep regularly, as it really makes a difference, especially in speed.

Yesterday, I wanted to use ripgrep with PCRE2 (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions), but when I tried it, I got this error message:

$ rg --pcre2 "(\b\S+\b)\s+\b\1\b"
PCRE2 is not available in this build of ripgrep

When I googled for the error message, I found the FAQ of the ripgrep project, which said…

If you installed ripgrep through a different means, then please reach out to the maintainer of that package to see whether it’s possible to enable the PCRE2 feature.

Ok, let’s see where I got ripgrep from.

$ which rg
/home/jugmac00/.cargo/bin/rg

Oops, I installed it myself.

I do had a look at ripgrep’s documentation, and some Rust documentation, and while I found out I could build a project with additional features like this…

$ cargo build --release --features 'pcre2'

… this would not solve my problem as then I have a binary which is not on my path.

solution

Finally I asked on ripgrep’s discussion board and immediately got an answer:

$ cargo install --features 'pcre2' ripgrep