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Runtimes

A runtime provides support for performing operations asynchronously (a reactor) and is responsible for executing futures (an executor). Rust does not have a "built-in" runtime, but several options are available:

• Tokio: performant, with a well-developed ecosystem of functionality like Hyper for HTTP or Tonic for gRPC.
• smol: simple and lightweight

Several larger applications have their own runtimes. For example, Fuchsia already has one.

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• Note that of the listed runtimes, only Tokio is supported in the Rust playground. The playground also does not permit any I/O, so most interesting async things can't run in the playground.

• Futures are "inert" in that they do not do anything (not even start an I/O operation) unless there is an executor polling them. This differs from JS Promises, for example, which will run to completion even if they are never used.

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