Re: Some more rust/cargo insights

[Leo Prikler <leo.prikler@student.tugraz.at>]

> Our issue is a different one: Its about being able to reuse already
> compiled binaries - keeping current behavior of rust binaries being
> statically linked.
> 
> While this looks like being the same as dynamic library support, it
> is not: While for dynamic libraries you meet to ensure the very
> correct version of a "crate" is loaded, for static linking with pre-
> build binaries you only need to ensure this at build-time. (For guix,
> of course, both would not be a problem, but I doubt we can make rust
> people understand this. And other distros will still have the
> problem.)
That plus static libraries can't be grafted, which can be a problem
when your programming language despite being touted as secure still
allows large arrays of buggy behaviour.  So while "statically linked,
but reusable and I swear, it really is reproducible" might work for the
time being, it is not a long-term solution.

One might be tempted to compare this to Go, which we also can't
dynamically link, but the important difference here is that Rust is
already being pulled in by core-updatesy stuff like GTK, so a bug in
certain Rust software would affect *a lot* of Guix users whereas Go is
mostly an ecosystem onto itself.  (Note, though, that a Go update would
need to go through staging – not an ideal situation either.)

Regards,
Leo