5 ms·

To be honest, Rust took so long to stop making breaking changes and stabilize, I sort of tuned out on it -- it was never at a point it made sense to start using

To be honest, Rust took so long to stop making breaking changes and stabilize, I sort of tuned out on it -- it was never at a point it made sense to start using. Has Rust actually settled down on some stability?

steveklabnik 10y ago
A little over 18 months ago, 1.0 was released. We've had very strong compatibility guarantees since then.
- nordsieck 10y ago
  While that is true, in Go, almost no libraries are written to use non-stable features. This is not the case in Rust.
  - steveklabnik 10y ago
    Right. Go and Rust have completely different development models, so that wouldn't make any sense. To recap, in Rust, to make additions to the language: 1. Small additions mean make a PR. 2. Big additions mean make an RFC, then a PR if accepted. 3. These PRs go behind a feature flag that lets us track the feature, and only allows it on nightly. 4. People who desire the new feature try it out. (This is what you refer to.) 5. If any issues are found, they're fixed, or, in the worst case, the feature is removed. 6. The feature is made available to stable users, the feature flag is removed, and backwards incompatible changes can no longer happen. What would be un-healthy is if everyone had to rely on nightly for everything. At the moment, most people use stable Rust. And of the people that use nightly, the largest single feature will be stable as of the next stable release for Rust. But some people are always going to be using nightly features, and that's a good thing: it means that by the time it hits stable, it's already undergone some degree of vetting.
    - setori88 10y ago
      Any idea when custom allocator will become stable? That's the only thing holding us to nightly.
      - steveklabnik 10y ago
        I literally had a conversation about this yesterday. We need someone to champion the work. If that's you, we should get in touch.
        setori88 10y ago
        email sent
        steveklabnik 10y ago
        Excellent! It might take me a day or two; I have some stuff to look up in order to give you a proper response.
    - kebolio 10y ago
      > Most people use stable Rust. However, many popular or important libraries like Serde or Rocket require the use of nightly. I recall the article a very short while ago on the front page that noted how Rust has effectively diverged into two languages, stable and nightly.
      - steveklabnik 10y ago
        Serde does not require nightly, though it is nicer to use on nightly. That's the "will be stable as of the next stable release for Rust" I alluded to above. Rocket just came out; I think it's an extremely interesting library, but https://crates.io/crates/rocket https://crates.io/crates/rocket shows that it's been downloaded 618 times. It hasn't exactly taken the world by storm yet. I think it shows great potential though! But it's not a good case of showing that the Rust ecosystem largely depends on nightly. The article you refer to contained a number of factual errors.
  - ekidd 10y ago
    There are really only two popular Rust libraries that use unstable features: 1. serde, the best serialization/deserialization library. This works on stable now using the `serge_codegen` crate and a custom `build.rs` script. This will Just Work on stable with no extra setup once Macros 1.1 lands, theoretically in about 5 weeks. But I'm using it on stable now in a half-dozen projects, thanks to a `build.rs` script. 2. Diesel, the high-level ORM library for Rust. This works on stable using a `build.rs` script, and 90% of it will work on stable without the `build.rs` script once Macros 1.1 ships. There are a few other experimental libraries like Rocket (which looks very slick) that only work on nightly Rust. But I don't think any of them are particularly popular yet. Personally, I maintain something like two dozen Rust crates and applications, and only two use nightly Rust. Both need Macros 1.1, which should be on stable in about 5 weeks.
    - kzrdude 10y ago
      serde works on stable without serde_codegen or custom build scripts, too. It works like a regular library in fact, just with less features (no code generation feature). A custom data structure might not be able to use the default code generation for its impls anyway.
      - bluejekyll 10y ago
        This is true of diesel as well: http://diesel.rs/guides/getting-started/ http://diesel.rs/guides/getting-started/
  - echelon 10y ago
    That article posted half a week ago [1] claiming Rust developers and libraries rely on nightly was FUD. It's terrible that this is being repeated, because it is simply not true. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13251729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13251729
  - kibwen 10y ago
    Er, there are no unstable features in Go... the language is deliberately frozen.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  What constitutes a strong compatibility guarantee? How many breaking changes happened in the past 18 months?
  - steveklabnik 10y ago
    I wrote this out yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13267399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13267399
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

steveklabnik 10y ago

A little over 18 months ago, 1.0 was released. We've had very strong compatibility guarantees since then.

nordsieck 10y ago
While that is true, in Go, almost no libraries are written to use non-stable features. This is not the case in Rust.
- steveklabnik 10y ago
  Right. Go and Rust have completely different development models, so that wouldn't make any sense. To recap, in Rust, to make additions to the language: 1. Small additions mean make a PR. 2. Big additions mean make an RFC, then a PR if accepted. 3. These PRs go behind a feature flag that lets us track the feature, and only allows it on nightly. 4. People who desire the new feature try it out. (This is what you refer to.) 5. If any issues are found, they're fixed, or, in the worst case, the feature is removed. 6. The feature is made available to stable users, the feature flag is removed, and backwards incompatible changes can no longer happen. What would be un-healthy is if everyone had to rely on nightly for everything. At the moment, most people use stable Rust. And of the people that use nightly, the largest single feature will be stable as of the next stable release for Rust. But some people are always going to be using nightly features, and that's a good thing: it means that by the time it hits stable, it's already undergone some degree of vetting.
  - setori88 10y ago
    Any idea when custom allocator will become stable? That's the only thing holding us to nightly.
    - steveklabnik 10y ago
      I literally had a conversation about this yesterday. We need someone to champion the work. If that's you, we should get in touch.
      - setori88 10y ago
        email sent
        steveklabnik 10y ago
        Excellent! It might take me a day or two; I have some stuff to look up in order to give you a proper response.
  - kebolio 10y ago
    > Most people use stable Rust. However, many popular or important libraries like Serde or Rocket require the use of nightly. I recall the article a very short while ago on the front page that noted how Rust has effectively diverged into two languages, stable and nightly.
    - steveklabnik 10y ago
      Serde does not require nightly, though it is nicer to use on nightly. That's the "will be stable as of the next stable release for Rust" I alluded to above. Rocket just came out; I think it's an extremely interesting library, but https://crates.io/crates/rocket https://crates.io/crates/rocket shows that it's been downloaded 618 times. It hasn't exactly taken the world by storm yet. I think it shows great potential though! But it's not a good case of showing that the Rust ecosystem largely depends on nightly. The article you refer to contained a number of factual errors.
- ekidd 10y ago
  There are really only two popular Rust libraries that use unstable features: 1. serde, the best serialization/deserialization library. This works on stable now using the `serge_codegen` crate and a custom `build.rs` script. This will Just Work on stable with no extra setup once Macros 1.1 lands, theoretically in about 5 weeks. But I'm using it on stable now in a half-dozen projects, thanks to a `build.rs` script. 2. Diesel, the high-level ORM library for Rust. This works on stable using a `build.rs` script, and 90% of it will work on stable without the `build.rs` script once Macros 1.1 ships. There are a few other experimental libraries like Rocket (which looks very slick) that only work on nightly Rust. But I don't think any of them are particularly popular yet. Personally, I maintain something like two dozen Rust crates and applications, and only two use nightly Rust. Both need Macros 1.1, which should be on stable in about 5 weeks.
  - kzrdude 10y ago
    serde works on stable without serde_codegen or custom build scripts, too. It works like a regular library in fact, just with less features (no code generation feature). A custom data structure might not be able to use the default code generation for its impls anyway.
    - bluejekyll 10y ago
      This is true of diesel as well: http://diesel.rs/guides/getting-started/ http://diesel.rs/guides/getting-started/
- echelon 10y ago
  That article posted half a week ago [1] claiming Rust developers and libraries rely on nightly was FUD. It's terrible that this is being repeated, because it is simply not true. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13251729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13251729
- kibwen 10y ago
  Er, there are no unstable features in Go... the language is deliberately frozen.
SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
What constitutes a strong compatibility guarantee? How many breaking changes happened in the past 18 months?
- steveklabnik 10y ago
  I wrote this out yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13267399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13267399
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]