Crates.io compatibility with old cargo

I think an LTS would make sense to make it easier for LTS distributions to pick a version.

On more immediate matters: anyone in contact with the universe maintainers? I'd volunteer otherwise.

I think an LTS would be great for formalizing compatibility across the Rust ecosystem. Right now there's a very informal and varied environment, where cargo and crates.io are supposed to stay compatible, and many crates try to maintain as much older compatibility as possible, while others aim only for stable or stable-1.

With an LTS, there's some commitment that (1) Rust developers will maintain this - fixing security issues at least, and maybe some bugs too, (2) Rust infrastructure will make sure to support that LTS, and (3) the broader ecosystem has an official suggestion of how far back to maintain compatibility.

However, note that while this particular issue does affect an LTS release of Ubuntu, it's less than a year old! That's barely long-term by any usual sense of the term...

Sure, everyone understood that. I try to get in touch with MOTU tonight.

I agree. It's something we've long talked about on the core team. Would you be interested in working on an RFC, with some mentoring help from me and @alexcrichton?

A bit late to the thread, but I've been interested in the idea of LTS as well. If anyone is writing something up, I'd be interested in helping out!

I am interested in working on an LTS RFC, and I'm happy to know that core team members want to see this too. I've been too busy this week to start on it, but I'll try to get to it soon. What's the best way to collaborate on this?

Recent "collaborative" RFCs have been starting in their own repos; see https://github.com/nikomatsakis/rfc-elision-2.0 for example.

So, I'd say, set one up with maybe some strawman text, open some issues, and let us subscribe :smile: