Re: Backporting Rust applications for Trixie
On Tue, Aug 26, 2025, at 1:48 PM, Micha Lenk wrote:
> Hi Fabian,
>
> On 16.08.25 08:40, Fabian Grünbichler wrote:
>> the question how to (potentially) handle Rust crate backporting for
>> Trixie came up in the Debian Rust team recently, and we would like to
>> have your input!
>>
>> some background information that might be relevant:
>> - Rust executables need to be statically linked
>> - there is no stable ABI for linking
>> - as a result, Rust "library" packages actually contain source code
>> - Rust dependency trees are (quite a bit) larger then C/.. ones
>>
>> in practice this means that for backporting an application (or shared
>> library for consumption via a C-compatible interface) there are two
>> options:
>>
>> A) backport everything
>> [...]
>>
>> B) vendoring
>> [...]
>
> If you ask me, I'd like to ask you to follow approach A.
>
> Rationale: In the end this is a challenge inherited from the rust eco
> system and how it is packaged in Debian. So, making *any* piece of
> software available in a Debian release means all the crates it needs
> during build need to get packaged first. This is a decision that was
> made when uploading things to unstable, and the Debian backports suites
> are not the place to change that approach. If you want to change the
> approach, I'd kindly ask you to change the approach in unstable/testing
> first.
Ack - thanks for your reply! We will try to implement a sensible
branching scheme in our monorepo and cautiously proceed with this option
then, I think :)
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