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Hopefully this will slow down development of new Rust features to a reasonable pace. Instead of Rust devs writing code that requires a new compiler every 3 mont

Hopefully this will slow down development of new Rust features to a reasonable pace. Instead of Rust devs writing code that requires a new compiler every 3 months it'll be more like every year or two. Almost useable.

dagmx 4y ago
This is an odd take that I feel is rooted in a misunderstanding. rust intentionally has a fairly rapid release schedule, so that you don't end up with a big release every year that introduces several possibly breaking changes. Features aren't randomly scheduled for each release. Instead each release is a snapshot of what's been stabilized by that point. If you prefer some arbitrary concept of stability, then you can quite easily lock to any version of rust this far and ignore any new versions till something catches your fancy.
- superkuh 4y ago
  This is the perspective of a developer. I am trying to explain the perspective of an open source desktop user who's ran into the backwards incompatibility in 4 out of 5 rust tools I've attempted to compile for use. The Rust language is fine. Great, even. Most Rust devs are bleeding edge types that always use the latest features. Hopefully this changes as Rust matures.
  - dagmx 4y ago
    The rust compiler rarely breaks backwards compatibility, so I'd be curious to see what issues you actually hit. Perhaps you mean forwards compatibility, in which case yes perhaps that's an issue but I'm not sure why you'd want bigger, slower release cadence when it would likely make your problem worse , when libs update but updating your compiler potentially causes significant other changes as is the case with C++ for example
  - tialaramex 4y ago
    I feel like the set of people who * Want to compile the software, not just install a pre-built binary * But, don't want to actually hack on the software and so don't care about up-to-date tools ... is probably rather small. Even for them, though, surely just an old source version will work? Or is there some reason that doesn't help?
NoraCodes 4y ago
I'm not sure I fully understand the gripe you have here. Rust releases a new compiler every 6 weeks. Many releases just improve optimization and a handful of newly stabilized APIs, or existing APIs newly made `const`, or whatever. When a big feature is finished, it is put out in the next release. There is no sense in which this increases the pace at which these new features are developed or released; if Rust released a new version yearly, we'd simply see extremely large releases some years (including, say, the new async/await system) and relatively small releases in others. What it does mean is that backwards-compatible refinements and bugfixes can be quickly and easily added to the language, which I think is a good thing. I'd be interested to know what you'd prefer, though!

dagmx 4y ago

This is an odd take that I feel is rooted in a misunderstanding. rust intentionally has a fairly rapid release schedule, so that you don't end up with a big release every year that introduces several possibly breaking changes. Features aren't randomly scheduled for each release. Instead each release is a snapshot of what's been stabilized by that point. If you prefer some arbitrary concept of stability, then you can quite easily lock to any version of rust this far and ignore any new versions till something catches your fancy.

superkuh 4y ago
This is the perspective of a developer. I am trying to explain the perspective of an open source desktop user who's ran into the backwards incompatibility in 4 out of 5 rust tools I've attempted to compile for use. The Rust language is fine. Great, even. Most Rust devs are bleeding edge types that always use the latest features. Hopefully this changes as Rust matures.
- dagmx 4y ago
  The rust compiler rarely breaks backwards compatibility, so I'd be curious to see what issues you actually hit. Perhaps you mean forwards compatibility, in which case yes perhaps that's an issue but I'm not sure why you'd want bigger, slower release cadence when it would likely make your problem worse , when libs update but updating your compiler potentially causes significant other changes as is the case with C++ for example
- tialaramex 4y ago
  I feel like the set of people who * Want to compile the software, not just install a pre-built binary * But, don't want to actually hack on the software and so don't care about up-to-date tools ... is probably rather small. Even for them, though, surely just an old source version will work? Or is there some reason that doesn't help?

NoraCodes 4y ago

I'm not sure I fully understand the gripe you have here. Rust releases a new compiler every 6 weeks. Many releases just improve optimization and a handful of newly stabilized APIs, or existing APIs newly made `const`, or whatever. When a big feature is finished, it is put out in the next release. There is no sense in which this increases the pace at which these new features are developed or released; if Rust released a new version yearly, we'd simply see extremely large releases some years (including, say, the new async/await system) and relatively small releases in others. What it does mean is that backwards-compatible refinements and bugfixes can be quickly and easily added to the language, which I think is a good thing. I'd be interested to know what you'd prefer, though!