The Rusticon

This is currently a work in progress - feel free to alter or add definitions as necessary.

term	definition
attribute	A way of adding metadata to an item. Written as #[attribute_name] (other examples being #[doc="Foo"], #[doc(hidden="true")]).
bikeshed	A highly important discussion about some non-fundamental part of the language (such as syntax or identifier names).
borrowed pointer	Also known as a "reference". It references an object without taking ownership of it. Has an associated lifetime, to assert that it is always valid.
bors	A Python script that checks for reviewed pull requests and runs the test on it, merging it if they pass.
box	An allocated chunk of memory.
closure	Refers both to the type (&fn, ~fn) and the literal notation: ∣args∣ expression (where expression can be a block, ie ∣x∣ { println(x.to_str()); 5}). It is said to "close over" its environment; it can "capture" values from surrounding code. (Note: This is using a non-pipe unicode character because github doesn't like using that character in tables.)
crate	Rust's compilation unit, a single library or executable. Is the root of a namespace.
FFI	See foreign function interface.
foreign function interface	Calling code written in another language. Rust has a native C FFI, using extern "C" fn.
heap allocation	A dynamic allocation performed either by ~ or @, which call to malloc in the default runtime (which is a statically-linked jemalloc).
inlining	Inlining is removal of a function call by including the function body directly into the callsite, enabling further optimizations. Controlled with the inline attribute: #[inline(never)], #[inline] for a standard (though very strong) inline hint, and #[inline(always)]. Note that #[inline] is required for cross-crate inline.
IR	See Intermediate Representation.
Intermediate Representation	LLVM IR Code. It can be printed by passing-S -emit-llvm to the compiler.
lifetime	A piece of metadata that borrowed pointers have. They reference the scope that the pointer is valid for.
macro	A type of syntax extension, defined with macro_rules! name_of_macro. Are a way of declaratively generating Rust from arbitrary tokens. For example, assert!, debug!, and fail! are macros. The standard macros can be found here.
managed pointer	@T, a pointer to a mutable, garbage-collected box.
monomorphise	The act of generating specialized versions of generic constructs at compile time to improve run time performance. See Whole-Program Compilation in MLton and Niko Matsakis's answer on Stackoverflow.
owned pointer	~T, a pointer to an owned box.
raw pointer	*T, a pointer to anything. Requires unsafe code to dereference, no static verification is done on them.
rustdoc	The Rust documentation generator.
rustc	The Rust source code compiler.
rusti	The Rust interactive environment.
rustpkg	The official package manager for Rust programs and libraries.
sigil	A character placed in front of a type, identifier or literal. In the context of Rust, this usually refers to the pointer symbols: &, ~, @, and *.
stack allocation	All local variables are a stack allocation.
syntax extension	Code generation at runtime, broken into three groups: declarative macros, which are described above as macros; procedural macros, which are written as Rust code that processes a token tree and produce an AST (currently requires editing the compiler), and attributes.
task	Rust's fundamental unit of computation. Similar to a thread but far more lightweight.
trait	Rust's approach to ad-hoc polymorphism, and used for generics and dynamic dispatch. Also known as type classes.
TWiR	This Week in Rust. cmr's weekly summary of Rust's development.
IRFY	Is Rust Fast Yet. Graphs tracking how long the buildbots take to build + test. Also see its companion, Is Rust Slim Yet.