Plugin systems and distributing dynamic libraries are the two big use-cases. For the second use-case, distributions can handle that somewhat okay by simply enf

Plugin systems and distributing dynamic libraries are the two big use-cases. For the second use-case, distributions can handle that somewhat okay by simply enforcing that all packages are compiled with the same rustc version. That works okay, but it means that, as an external user, you can't really depend on those libraries for your own executables, as you'll need to recompile when the distribution updates.