17 ms·
> Rust does not have shared libraries Nonsense. Rust has shared libraries just as much as C and C++ do. Distributions can and do build individual Rust crates a
by Rusky 7y ago
> Rust does not have shared libraries
Nonsense. Rust has shared libraries just as much as C and C++ do. Distributions can and do build individual Rust crates as shared libraries, and crate authors can go further and offer a shared library with a C ABI that remains stable across rustc versions. (The latter is what cbindgen is for.)
The problem here is that the maintainers don't want to keep multiple versions of a crate around, so when any single application uses a newer version it forces an update on all the rest. Which is exactly what Rust's tendency toward static linking avoids.
- zozbot234 7y agoIt's not that simple. New versions of Firefox can require a higher minimum version for the Rust compiler, and upgrading that will break the ABI for all crates that don't stick to a pure C ABI, regardless of shared vs. static linking,