Debian’s APT package manager will have a “hard requirement” on Rust from May 2026. This move may make some rather big waves.
Holy hell, wasn’t expecting that many downvotes. Wow. I wonder who I pissed off more, systemd or Wayland folks? :P
That’s fine, this is why Linux distros should always be diverse, to allow users to build their system using the tools of their choice. And why one project should never be in a position to unilaterally obsolete entire subsystems by fiat. Which is what I fear is being attempted here – that was my point.
Debian has a lot of sway, but if they make moves some of us don’t agree with, we have the freedom to go elsewhere. Thank you, Devuan maintainers, for what you’ve done so far.
Sad though, as I was an OG Debian fanboy, using it since the late 90’s.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to drop some CPU architectures that haven’t been relevant in the last 20 years. It seems to me there are a lot of new people eager to contribute who have no interest in touching C any more than necessary, and a project that can no longer attract new contributors will sooner or later die.
How much of C programming is realistically dedicated to memory-management? As an amateur I always enjoyed working with C but I never worked on big, complex systems-programs or kernels.
I wonder if Gentoo is going to become the last option standing for some of these obsolete arches. Of course, it may only be matter of time before Portage won’t work on wd40 arches either, given the increased uptake of Rust in Python packages.
Honestly I wonder when gccrs will become viable as a compiler because that could bring support for some of the more niche CPUs
https://lwn.net/Articles/1040197/
People often ask “when will gccrs be ready?”, he said. It will be ready in one sense — building libcore, though perhaps not compiling it entirely correctly — by early 2026.
That doesn’t mean it’s actually viable though, but it’s slowly getting there.
How does one comment from a dev with virtual no follow up amounts to being news? Is there an official stance by the dev team?
This is the official stance.
But no it’s not really news, since Debian already has a hard dependency on rust, as noted in the article.
Unless they absolutely guarantee feature-parity with the existing C-based utils, this smacks of Wayland-ism.
Debian is really losing the plot IMO. Glad I switched to Devuan some time ago.
The real concern with replacing C tools with Rust ones is that it’s an opportunity for useful idiots/scumbags to change the license to something that benefits corporations at the expense of the public.
We should be ignoring all attempts to subvert copyleft, but I know that’s too high of a bar for most of you to reach.
Apple and Sony will be happy, though.
Unless they absolutely guarantee feature-parity with the existing C-based utils
Is there any reason to think they won’t?
Debian is really losing the plot IMO. Glad I switched to Devuan some time ago.
Aren’t you just an anti-wayland anti-systemd weirdo? Not that there is anything wrong with using what you want, but pretending they aren’t much needed improvements in the long run is ridiculous
Yup, guess I am :) … for now.
I have tried Wayland a few times over the past few years, probably bad luck on my part with what systems/chipsets I’ve had every time, that it hasn’t been a great experience. But I have read it’s getting there, so I expect someday I’ll just switch and not really notice the difference there.
As for systemd… yeah I’ll be “a wierdo” for the foreseeable future I suppose. Good ol’ sysV init scripts, or openrc, have always, and still do, work well enough for me.
RIIR projects usually don’t have feature parity.
