4 ms·
(side note: I don't think I've ever thanked you for your many contributions to the Rust ecosystem, so let me do that now: thank you!) > You're talking about ho
by cornstalks 2y ago
(side note: I don't think I've ever thanked you for your many contributions to the Rust ecosystem, so let me do that now: thank you!)
> You're talking about how a compiler is backwards compatible. We're talking about the language itself, and upgrading from one versions of the language to the next.
That's part of the problem. Rust doesn't have a spec. The compiler is the spec. So I don't think we can separate the two in a meaningful way.
- steveklabnik 2y agoYou're welcome! > So I don't think we can separate the two in a meaningful way. I think that in that case, you'd compare like with like, upgrading both. I do agree that gcc and clang supporting older specs with a flag is a great feature, and is something that Rust cannot do right now. But the results of the annual survey have come out: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/02/13/2024-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results.html https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/02/13/2024-State-Of-Rust-Sur... And 90% of users use the current stable version for development. 7.8% use a specific stable released within the past year. These numbers are only so high because it is such a small hassle to update even large Rust codebases between releases. So yes, in theory, breakage can happen. But that's in theory. In practice, this isn't a thing that happens very much.