Cranelift is not used for debug builds by default. I think that's probably a goal (although I'm not actually 100% sure about that just because I'm not dialed in

Cranelift is not used for debug builds by default. I think that's probably a goal (although I'm not actually 100% sure about that just because I'm not dialed into what the compiler team is doing). Even the OP mentions this: > We were able to benchmark bjorn3's cranelift codegen backend on full crates as well as on the build dependencies specifically (since they're also built for cargo check builds, and are always built without optimizations): there were no issues, and it performed impressively. It's well on its way to becoming a viable alternative to the LLVM backend for debug builds. And the Cranelift codegen backend itself is also clear about it not being ready yet: https://github.com/bjorn3/rustc_codegen_cranelift https://github.com/bjorn3/rustc_codegen_cranelift (To be clear, I am super excited about using Cranelift for debug builds. I just want to clarify that it isn't actually used by default yet.)