1. Cross compiling has worked in rust since before 1.0, but it's required some manual configuration (downloading the platform's stdlib and adding command line switches, etc.). A goal for the future is push-button cross compilation [1]. I'd also add that the standard library has most of what you'd want for cross platform compatibility, from higher-level interfaces that work cross-platform (like std::thread [2]) to lower level bindings for each platform like (std::os::unix::fs [3] or the OsStr system [4]).
2. Yep, C interfaces are pretty trivial. However, they do need to be manually defined. There is no built-in way to parse C header files or declarations. [5]
Google Spell Check, WordCount, and Wrap Plus for docs.
LLVM for IR highlighting, Rust for Rust highlighting.
I've tried racer in the past but it just doesn't scale with the current compiler architecture. I'm hoping the ongoing refactoring work will get us a great incremental/parallel/continuous compilation system for autocomplete/red-squigglies.
My two biggest pains are: "trivial" errors (syntax, typos, etc) which I ideally would just see as red squigglies as I go (not a compile-fail loop); and the absolute lack of any kind of incremental compilation (which paired with the community's over-use of generics is super painful for codegen time).
1. Cross compiling has worked in rust since before 1.0, but it's required some manual configuration (downloading the platform's stdlib and adding command line switches, etc.). A goal for the future is push-button cross compilation [1]. I'd also add that the standard library has most of what you'd want for cross platform compatibility, from higher-level interfaces that work cross-platform (like std::thread [2]) to lower level bindings for each platform like (std::os::unix::fs [3] or the OsStr system [4]).
2. Yep, C interfaces are pretty trivial. However, they do need to be manually defined. There is no built-in way to parse C header files or declarations. [5]
[1]: http://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/08/14/Next-year.html
[2]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/std/thread/
[3]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/std/os/unix/fs/
[4]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/std/ffi/struct.OsStr.html
[5]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/book/ffi.html