2026-10-25 13:28 UTC
Firefox and Python’s cryptography toolchain have a build dependency on Rust, which are two packages that virtually all Linux distributions have packaged. So, some version of the Rust compiler is going to be available on virtually all Linux distributions.
There’s no real reason to have the Rust compiler installed on non-dev systems, as you don’t need it for running Rust programs (although I kind of assume you know this).
But yeah, it seems to be possible to dynamically link the standard library into Rust programs, so Linux distros could try to share that between them, and then it would effectively be installed by default.
Replies (1)
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@thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 2026-10-25 13:39
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).