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@thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
2026-10-26 19:51 UTC
I’m not saying it stops people from using rustc only. I think there is a huge misunderstanding here. Currently, its just highly specialized use cases where they have to use rustc only without even the standard library (I think the Linux Kernel doesn’t use the stdlib). What I say is, that the current infrastructure and distributions doesn’t treat rustc+stdlib as its own thing, that nobody will target it and everyone assumes Cargo.
In example there is no rustc+stdlib compiler as a package by distributions. This should be a standard package by all distributions in my opinion, just like we have C compilers doing the most basic thing. From packaging standpoint. This would encourage people to do such projects, as if you just require basic tools that are not always installed, but can be assumed to easily install. It also should have less dependencies than Cargo and rustfmt in example, or even rustup.
I think the g++ comparison doesn’t hold here, because it’s not the only way of using the language. Rust on the other hand has only one other way of doing this, it’s the dependency heavy and full package with cargo and the rest, even usually downloading dependencies and and so on. It’s a full package manager. If g++ was the only alternative to such a system, I think it would have more widespread adoption.
Debian does have a rustc package, is using rustc directly more widespread in Debian?
Well it needs to be a standard in most common distributions. No one wants to rely on something that is found in one distribution only.
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What I say is, that the current infrastructure and distributions doesn’t treat rustc+stdlib as its own thing, that nobody will target it and everyone assumes Cargo.
That’s just an assumption you are making. In fact, if anything, it’s easier to assume rustc than it is to assume cargo, because cargo needs rustc, but rustc does not need cargo… so if you really were looking for the most universal cross-distro assumption, then it would make more sense to assume rustc (which has to be installed to have cargo anyway) than to assume cargo.
I think the g++ comparison doesn’t hold here, because it’s not the only way of using the language.
I’m not sure what do you even mean by that…
Well it needs to be a standard in most common distributions. No one wants to rely on something that is found in one distribution only.
A lot of things aren’t standard across distros. gcc itself is packaged differently often… do you think nobody wants to rely on it?
How many distros do you need to do the same?
Debian doing this means that essentially all apt-get based distros follow the same approach of separating rust and cargo (Ubuntu, Mint, and all the variations).
Also in Fedora / RHEL / AlmaLinux / Rocky Linux… “rust” contains rustc, cargo is split to its separate “cargo” subpackage.
Also Alpine Linux, cargo is a separate package from rust.
Void Linux, also cargo separate package from rust,
NixOS, has pkgs.rustc and pkgs.cargo as separate derivations.
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