[Pkg-rust-maintainers] Bug#796256: Bug#796256: Bug#796256: Bug#796256: Please consider packaging a Rust version that allows #![feature(...)]

[josh at joshtriplett.org]

On Wed, Sep 02, 2015 at 08:06:21PM +0200, Ximin Luo wrote:
> On 02/09/15 19:47, Luca Bruno wrote:
> > On Wednesday 02 September 2015 16:53:27 Ximin Luo wrote:
> > 
> >> 1.4.0~~nightly.20150901+dfsg1-1 built for amd64, all tests passing, uploaded
> >> here in experimental:
> >>
> >> https://people.torproject.org/~infinity0/apt/
> >> If people like it, I can upload a version to Debian experimental tomorrow. 
> > 
> >  
> >> I also made a beta version here, but haven't yet had time to build it:
> >>
> >> http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/r/rustc/rustc_1.3.0~beta.3.201508
> >> 12+dfsg1-1.dsc
> > 
> > I have to agree with Angus here, I think that having nightlies in the archive 
> > is really a bad idea, even if just in experimental.
> > Features are gated for a reason (still being discussed, to be soon removed, 
> > etc.) and it is counterproductive to easily provide them to the wide audience.
> > 
> 
> But rust upstream is *already* providing them to a wide audience... I would be more convinced of this argument if they *didn't* release nightlies. Not many projects do this; they made an explicit decision to.

Right, exactly.  Rust provides precompiled binaries of nightly versions,
rather than just saying "if you need these, you should build from source
yourself".  But Debian users shouldn't have to download and run binaries
provided elsewhere; there are *huge* advantages to doing so through
Debian packages instead.  I absolutely agree that rust nightly binaries
should never appear in unstable/testing/stable, but experimental seems
perfectly sensible.

- Josh Triplett