[Pkg-rust-maintainers] 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 07:47:53PM +0200, Luca Bruno wrote:
> 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.

Having access to gated features allows testing them and providing
feedback.  And, as far as I can tell, many packages in the cargo
ecosystem do so.

> Moreover, due to soname versioning, this means multiple trips through NEW 
> every release cycle (6 weeks), and I honestly think it's a waste of project's 
> resources.

GCC provides self-contained snapshot packages ("gcc-snapshot"), which
bundle all components in a single package.  That seems sensible here as
well.  Since no package in the archive should build-depend on
rust-nightly, the soname versioning doesn't need to appear in the
package name; the shared library can just go in the same rust-nightly
package.

> Regarding the specific initial issue (gated libc), doc explicitly tells to use 
> the external "libc" crate instead. Even with nightly channel, the other 
> project would still need to be patched. 

I'm not the maintainer of the external projects on cargo that use those
features, and that was not by any means the only such feature the
package used.

- Josh Triplett