On Sat, May 10, 2025, 9:54 AM Michael Orlitzky <mich...@orlitzky.com> wrote:
> On 2025-05-10 00:29:33, Jacob Bachmeyer wrote: > > > > Programs either no longer compile with a newer compiler or (worse) > > compile but with different semantics. I *think* Rust has only had the > > first of those problems, but have not followed the issue closely enough > > to be sure. Python infamously had the latter problem with the > > Python2->Python3 transition, but that at least had a major version bump > > associated with it. > > The ABI is also unstable, so you can't upgrade rust libraries without > recompiling the entire system. This is a minor headache. But to work > around these issue, all rust projects bundle specific (old) versions > of their dependencies. This leads to rust package versions being > meaningless (because who cares, because everyone pins a version that > works) and is a much bigger headache. > If one uses core Rust only it is not an issue; and it's also not an issue if proper versioning is used (and Rust supports shared libraries called "dylib") I'm not sure how important the unstable ABI is for a program, and it's always possible to fashion m4 in Rust as a C-ABI library (in Rust) using their "repr(C)". Regards, Nikolaos Chatzikonstantinou >
