[MrJohz]

The popular Rust tool "ripgrep" uses a lock file for development (you can see it in the GitHub repo), and yet is in the official repositories for homebrew, various Windows package managers, Arch, Gentoo, Fedora, some versions of openSUSE, Guix, recent versions of Debian (and therefore Ubuntu), FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and Haiku.

With all due respect, I don't think you're correct.

[bombolo]

And how much rust software is packaged in distributions? Almost none. They haven't figured out the procedures, because distributions really really don't want pinned stuff around.

Homebrew, windows, arch all have very very relaxed processes to enter. There is no QA, you can just do whatever you want. I mean more like Fedora and Debian.

[burntsushi]

Bottom line is that the lock file in ripgrep's repo hasn't prevented it from being packaged. And I haven't heard of any distro maintainer complain about any lock file in any Rust program ever. So you're just plain empirically wrong about lock files preventing Rust programs from being packaged.

You've now moved on to talking about something else, which is "how much Rust software is packaged." Well, apparently enough that Debian has Rust packaging policy[1]. I'll give you one guess at what isn't mentioned in that policy. Give up? Lock files!

[1]: https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/RustPackaging/Policy

[bombolo]

> So you're just plain empirically wrong about lock files preventing Rust programs from being packaged.

My mistake, seems rust packagers gave up on decent packaging. It isn't so for the python policy, I can assure you :)

[burntsushi]

I haven't heard anyone complain about how Rust programs are packaged. Take your passive aggressive bullshit somewhere else.

[sseagull]

How Linux package managers handle these newer languages with their own package managers (including rust) is an ongoing pain point. Here’s an article from 2017 about it, and I don’t know if things have improved:

https://lwn.net/Articles/712318/

[burntsushi]

I didn't say it wasn't a pain point or that there weren't challenges. I said I don't hear about people complain about how Rust programs are packaged. Not that the packaging of Rust programs (among others) itself doesn't present interesting challenges depending on the policies of a particular distro. Archlinux, for example, has far fewer problems than Debian because of differences in policy.

The poster I was responding to was literally posting false information. I'm correcting it. This doesn't need to turn into a huge long sprawling discussion about packaging Rust programs. The main point that I was making is that lock files do not prevent Rust programs from being packaged. bombolo then went off on their own little tangents spouting nonsense without bothering to acknowledge their mistake.

[dontlaugh]

The distros will eventually stop this dangerous practice of mixing and matching versions for all dependencies. It can only work for a small set of system components, which is what every other OS does.

[bombolo]

It's more dangerous to let people pin dependencies and have vulnerable libraries in use forever.

[burntsushi]

Who says the distros are using the lock file? AFAIK, Debian doesn't use ripgrep's lock file, for example. They don't have to, because of semver.

[LtWorf]

What's the point of the lockfile then?

[burntsushi]

For people that want to build with the exact set of dependency versions tested by upstream. Just because some distros don't use them doesn't mean there isn't any point.