rust-crate-path-locator

name	rust-crate-path-locator
description	Locate Rust crate source and documentation paths by asking Cargo instead of assuming ~/.cargo. Use when the user asks to inspect a crate implementation, find local crate files, or get the matching docs.rs URL for a dependency.

Rust Crate Path Locator

Do not assume crates live under ~/.cargo. Use Cargo's resolved metadata first.

Workflow

1. From the Rust project root, run cargo metadata --format-version 1.
2. Find the package whose name matches the crate.
3. Use that package's manifest_path; its directory is the crate source root.
4. Report the source root and docs URL: https://docs.rs/<crate>/<version>.

Commands

cargo metadata --format-version 1

If jq is available, this is a convenient filter:

cargo metadata --format-version 1 |
  jq -r '.packages[] | select(.name == "ratatui") | "\(.manifest_path)\nhttps://docs.rs/\(.name)/\(.version)"'

If the crate is not in the current dependency graph, say so. For a crate that should be local but has not been fetched yet, run cargo fetch in a project that depends on it, then retry cargo metadata.