Project with serde cannot compile - rust

Question

When I try to run the example from the serde repository:
#![feature(proc_macro)]
#[macro_use]
extern crate serde_derive;
extern crate serde_json;
#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Debug)]
struct Point {
x: i32,
y: i32,
}
fn main() {
let point = Point { x: 1, y: 2 };
// Convert the Point to a JSON string.
let serialized = serde_json::to_string(&point).unwrap();
// Prints serialized = {"x":1,"y":2}
println!("serialized = {}", serialized);
// Convert the JSON string back to a Point.
let deserialized: Point = serde_json::from_str(&serialized).unwrap();
// Prints deserialized = Point { x: 1, y: 2 }
println!("deserialized = {:?}", deserialized);
}
I get an error:
error: failed to run rustc to learn about target-specific
information
Caused by: process didn't exit successfully: rustc - --crate-name _
--print=file-names --crate-type bin --crate-type proc-macro --crate-type rlib --target x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (exit code: 101)
--- stderr error: unknown crate type: proc-macro
My Rust version is 1.13.0 and my Cargo.toml has these dependencies:
[dependencies]
serde = "*"
serde_derive = "*"
Should I use other dependencies or extra configuration?

Answer 1

The #![feature(...)] attribute indicates code that uses Rust features which have not been stabilized yet. At the time the question was asked, the proc_macro feature was not yet stable. Serde needs this feature for its #[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)] macros.
Custom derives have been stabilized as of Rust 1.15 so the code in the question (with the feature attribute removed) should work on any Rust compiler since that version.