Is your point that the second Makefile is more complex? Because you are not compiling the same project as in the first one… the first one does not have the libraries and flags that you are wanting to use in the second one. I’d argue the first Makefile (the one for the C project) would be just as complex as the rust one if you were going to have it point to libraries under particular versioned folders set up by a third party dependency tool (in this case, cargo). Earlier you said that you can use cargo as a build tool without depending on its package system… but now your proposed Makefile is doing the opposite, you are depending on cargo’s registry system (/usr/share/cargo/registry) while trying to not use cargo… which of course it’s gonna be awkward.