Am I right in saying Rust can produce executables that can be run without any Rust runtime etc being on the target system? Why would you need to install Rust in cases like this?
Yes you are, but the author hasn't provided those executables, so you need to produce one for your platform yourself; for which you need to install rust.
(Presumably it's deemed not worthwhile providing them while it's unstable/in active pre-1.0 development.)
Am I right in saying Rust can produce executables that can be run without any Rust runtime etc being on the target system? Why would you need to install Rust in cases like this?