2. Exists, but isn't particuarly easy. The biggest hurdle is getting a copy of the standard library for the target platform, then it's pretty easy. It's gonna be a focus in the near-term.
EDIT:
Quick googling revealed that Rust doesn't work with musl libc yet. It will be really nice when it will be fixed.
Making this work well is a very high priority.
There's a community member that keeps the iOS build green, I forget which ARM that is.
The official tested support is for V7-A, but V6 support also is in tree.
The alternative is you download a binary and run it, at which point that binary can do whatever the shell script could have done.
(The other alternative is you download source, at which point the Makefile or any other piece of the build that you execute can do whatever the shell script would have done.)
As long as the script is available via https the security is equivalent to the alternatives.
Part of the problem with this is that since it's a bootstrapped compiler, and the only one for the language so far, "downloading source" mean you need a binary to compile it with, which devolves to the same problem.
I've still thought about doing it.
Allow me to ask some questions, because I cannot easily find the answers and they're IMHO crucial for wider Rust adoption:
1. What CPU architectures/platforms Rust currently supports?
2. What's the state of cross-compilation support?
Most of devs have workstation on i386/amd64, but some of us may work with ARM, PowerPC and other architectures. Rust's memory safety seems appealing for embedded solutions, but can it be used there already?
BTW The install page is not well-thought-out.
http://www.rust-lang.org/install.html
Unless I hover on the 32-bit/64-bit links and read addresses they point to, there's no way to tell whether it's for x86 or ARM for instance. And installation via piping script that is being downloaded to shell is something that shouldn't be present at all.