Post by @thingsiplay@lemmy.ml

2026-10-25 13:39 UTC

You don’t need to be a developer in order to compile little programs. Like in C it is totally normal to do so, without being a programmer. Just use a make command on a Github project and install it manually. I would put Rust at the same level as C, so yes, most people wouldn’t have it installed or need it. But the compile rustc should be packaged by all distributions and it should be part of a meta package for basic development tools (also used by non developers). In a way that any program could assume everyone on Linux is able to compile with a basic Makefile, like we do this with C in example (if compiler tools are installed).

Replies (2)

@urushitan@kakera.kintsugi.moe 2026-10-25 15:05

Well, like with everything now, rust is much more than the compiler, and will need the entire toolchain, so you’d want rust up or pinned toolchain packages so you had access to cargo and the full ecosystem.

Open ##5240850
@Ephera@lemmy.ml 2026-10-25 19:35

Fair enough, I guess. Personally, I don’t really see the point, because there’s hardly any projects that can be compiled with just rustc. I mean, cargo is actually surprisingly useful for normal users, because there’s a decent chance you can compile medium-sized Rust projects without having to jump through endless hoops. But yeah, at that point, you’re adding a nontrivial number of megabytes to user installations for something they might not use. I would guess that even just rustc is larger than gcc and clang, since it implements more sophisticated logic…

Open ##5243741