There are patterns to address it such as creating your own Result type alias with the error type parameter (E) fixed to an error type you own: type Result<

There are patterns to address it such as creating your own Result type alias with the error type parameter (E) fixed to an error type you own: type Result<T> = result::Result<T, MyError>; #[derive(Debug)] enum MyError { IOError(String) // ... } Your owned (i.e. not third-party) Error type is a sum type of error types that might be thrown by other libraries, with a newtype wrapper (`IOError`) on top. Then implement the `From` trait to map errors from third-party libraries to your own custom Error space: impl From<io::Error> for MyError { fn from(e: io::Error) -> MyError { MyError::IOError(e.to_string()) } } Now you can convert any result into a single type that you control by transforming the errors: return sender .write_all(msg.as_bytes()) .map_err(|e| e.into()); There is a little boilerplate and mapping between error spaces that is required but I don't find it that onerous.