> rust insists on a very specific version of various dependencies It only insists on semver-compatible versions (if a Rust/Cargo package specifies libfoo=5.1,

> rust insists on a very specific version of various dependencies It only insists on semver-compatible versions (if a Rust/Cargo package specifies libfoo=5.1, it will work with libfoo=5.9). It's one per major version, not that different from Debian packaging "libfoo5" and "libfoo7" when both are needed. The difference is that Cargo unifies versions by updating them to the newest compatible, and Debian unifies them by downgrading them to old unsupported versions, ignores compatibility, and reintroduces bugs, and disables required functionality.