this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2025
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Debian's APT package manager will have a "hard requirement" on Rust from May 2026. This move may make some rather big waves.

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[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 hours ago

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.

[–] e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de 24 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 1 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] Scoopta@programming.dev 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Honestly I wonder when gccrs will become viable as a compiler because that could bring support for some of the more niche CPUs

[–] Overspark@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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?

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 12 points 1 day ago

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.