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One significant reason to use an old compiler is if you want to avoid having multiple package managers on your system (i.e. rustup _and_ apt). The normal philo

One significant reason to use an old compiler is if you want to avoid having multiple package managers on your system (i.e. rustup _and_ apt). The normal philosophy on typical Linux systems is in fact _not_ to require bleeding-edge compiler versions; there’s no “gccup” program. It’s the rust project that is proposing a new and different model.

linkdd 6y ago
I would add that having multiple package managers on the same system can be a hazard. For example, NEVER install a Python package globally with pip on a Debian System, it WILL conflict with Debian packages (and you'll be very unhappy and confused on the next apt remove or pip uninstall).
- remexre 6y ago
  Rust/Cargo definitely learned what not to do from pip...
nicoburns 6y ago
IMO you shouldn't really ever be using system provided versions of compilers or programming languages. Linux distros are significantly constrained in terms of which language versions they package because they need to use those versions to package packages which rely on those languages. That, along with the fact that most distros only release every 6 months to 2 years means that you generally have quite out of date versions. It seems that rustup itself is not currently packaged by debian or other linux distros which seems to be a bigger issue. If you could `apt install rustup && rustup install stable` then that seems preferably in pretty much every way to `apt install rust` and getting an old version.
- aww_dang 6y ago
  Src based distros tend to be a little better with this.
rapsey 6y ago
You don't need to have it installed in /usr. It can be (and is by default) completely contained within your home folder. Anyone not doing it this way is just making life needlessly hard for himself and his problems should be ignored entirely.
Ar-Curunir 6y ago
For devs, there's no reason to have to use an old version of Rust, especially given Rust's strong backwards compatibility guarantees. It's not like Rust takes advantage of dynamic linking by having all libraries being compiled with the same compiler.

linkdd 6y ago

I would add that having multiple package managers on the same system can be a hazard. For example, NEVER install a Python package globally with pip on a Debian System, it WILL conflict with Debian packages (and you'll be very unhappy and confused on the next apt remove or pip uninstall).

remexre 6y ago
Rust/Cargo definitely learned what not to do from pip...

nicoburns 6y ago

IMO you shouldn't really ever be using system provided versions of compilers or programming languages. Linux distros are significantly constrained in terms of which language versions they package because they need to use those versions to package packages which rely on those languages. That, along with the fact that most distros only release every 6 months to 2 years means that you generally have quite out of date versions. It seems that rustup itself is not currently packaged by debian or other linux distros which seems to be a bigger issue. If you could `apt install rustup && rustup install stable` then that seems preferably in pretty much every way to `apt install rust` and getting an old version.

aww_dang 6y ago
Src based distros tend to be a little better with this.

rapsey 6y ago

You don't need to have it installed in /usr. It can be (and is by default) completely contained within your home folder. Anyone not doing it this way is just making life needlessly hard for himself and his problems should be ignored entirely.

Ar-Curunir 6y ago

For devs, there's no reason to have to use an old version of Rust, especially given Rust's strong backwards compatibility guarantees. It's not like Rust takes advantage of dynamic linking by having all libraries being compiled with the same compiler.