Re: Backporting Rust applications for Trixie

Hi Fabian,

On 16.08.25 08:40, Fabian Grünbichler wrote:
> the question how to (potentially) handle Rust crate backporting for
> Trixie came up in the Debian Rust team recently, and we would like to
> have your input!
>
> some background information that might be relevant:
> - Rust executables need to be statically linked
> - there is no stable ABI for linking
> - as a result, Rust "library" packages actually contain source code
> - Rust dependency trees are (quite a bit) larger then C/.. ones
>
> in practice this means that for backporting an application (or shared
> library for consumption via a C-compatible interface) there are two
> options:
>
> A) backport everything
> [...]
>
> B) vendoring
> [...]

If you ask me, I'd like to ask you to follow approach A.

Rationale: In the end this is a challenge inherited from the rust eco 
system and how it is packaged in Debian. So, making *any* piece of 
software available in a Debian release means all the crates it needs 
during build need to get packaged first. This is a decision that was 
made when uploading things to unstable, and the Debian backports suites 
are not the place to change that approach. If you want to change the 
approach, I'd kindly ask you to change the approach in unstable/testing 
first.

Best regards,
Micha