Confusing naming of builds folder

[pokepetter]

After running cargo build, I wanted to find the build it made.
My first guess was that it would be in builds/, but there was such folder.
The output from cargo build did not say where it put it either.
I looked through the folders and finally found it in target/release/. To me, that's not a very intuitive name considering the command is called cargo build.

Have you considered using a more intuitive name, like builds/? Or maybe have cargo build say where it put it after it has finished?

[weihanglo]

The target directory layout is documented in https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/cargo/reference/build-cache.html#build-cache.

Since the target/ directory is so pervasive now, we can't simply change it. However, we are considering some changes for the layout of target directory, like splitting the intermediate build caches and he final artifact directory. See some more discussions in

• --artifact-dir (nee --out-dir) Tracking Issue #6790
• Redefine CARGO_TARGET_DIR to be only an artifacts directory #14125 (comment)
• https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/renaming-cargo-target/21585

Go ahead and close this since other issues should have tracked this. If the issue should be kept open, please comment below and let us know.

[weihanglo]

Or maybe have cargo build say where it put it after it has finished?

Regarding adding more messages, there are also complaints about Cargo being too verbose. We have some other discussions of revmaping the console output.

• Console output should better reflect the build process #8889
• Ability to suppress "Finished dev target" and "Running <path>" lines without hiding progress indicators #8743

At this moment, if you want programatic automations for getting the final artiacts, please take a look at the JSON message format Cargo can switch to.