> It seems wild to consider such intermediate files as part of public API. Someone relying on it does not automatically make it a breaking change if it’s not do

> It seems wild to consider such intermediate files as part of public API. Someone relying on it does not automatically make it a breaking change if it’s not documented. To find what is considered an intermediate vs a final artifact from cargo, you need to check out https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/build-cache.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/build-cache.html We are working on making this clearer with https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/14125 https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/14125 where there will be `build.build-dir` (intermediate files) and `build.target-dir` (final artifacts). When you do a `cargo build` inside of a library, like `clap`, you will get an rlip copied into `build.target-dir` (final artifacts). This is intended for integration with other build systems. There are holes with this workflow though but identifying all of the relevant cases for what might be a "safe" breakage is difficult.