Re: Hard Rust requirements from May onward

[Paul Tagliamonte <paultag@debian.org>]

Thanks for your hard work on this -

This will impact unofficial ports, which have already had to contend with Rusts widespread adoption of rust in lieu of C in places like Rust's crypto ecosystem

However, it's definitely more of a symptom rather than a cause of port bitrot - the impact of rust on ports has a simple solution -- help maintaining the port with rust upstream. I would encourage anyone upset by this -- frankly -- welcome news to help ensure rust has a stable port on your favorite arch. 

Paul

:wq

On Fri, Oct 31, 2025, 4:49 PM Julian Andres Klode <jak@debian.org> wrote:

Hi all,

I plan to introduce hard Rust dependencies and Rust code into
APT, no earlier than May 2026. This extends at first to the
Rust compiler and standard library, and the Sequoia ecosystem.

In particular, our code to parse .deb, .ar, .tar, and the
HTTP signature verification code would strongly benefit
from memory safe languages and a stronger approach to
unit testing.

If you maintain a port without a working Rust toolchain,
please ensure it has one within the next 6 months, or
sunset the port.

It's important for the project as whole to be able to
move forward and rely on modern tools and technologies
and not be held back by trying to shoehorn modern software
on retro computing devices.

Thank you for your understanding.
--
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