It’s worth noting, given the aspirational conclusion, that @T managed pointers were actually equivalent to Rc<T>, since they were only ever implemented with ref

It’s worth noting, given the aspirational conclusion, that @T managed pointers were actually equivalent to Rc<T>, since they were only ever implemented with reference counting without cycle collection. (This would have changed had they stayed in the language, but winds changed instead.) The standard library doesn’t ship tracing GC, and it’s still not altogether clear how it would be best to do it. https://manishearth.github.io/blog/2021/04/05/a-tour-of-safe-tracing-gc-designs-in-rust/ https://manishearth.github.io/blog/2021/04/05/a-tour-of-safe... is useful further reading. I think it’s fair to say that the “ship tracing GC as part of the standard library” ship has sailed, but power and convenience could still warrant language/standard library features to support it, though I doubt anything will ever happen, or at least in the next decade. The focus of the language shifted and was clarified quite a lot between the time of this article and even Rust 1.0 just under two years later.