Why old versions of crate get downloaded equally everyday?

[StefanSalewski]

@Redglyph

I believe that for cargo build, it will follow by default the content of the lock file when it exists, which spares the programmer any disrupting update when they're busy testing their code. That's not the case of cargo install, however.

That was really a bit surprising for me, but I think you are right. For cargo build Cargo.lock is used automatically. But for cargo install we have to pass the --locked flag, otherwise the Cargo.lock is ignored. At least that is how I understand the comments in "cargo install" apparently ignores "Cargo.lock" as opposed to "cargo build" · Issue #7169 · rust-lang/cargo · GitHub. And the Cargo book seems to mention the --locked flag only for cargo install , see cargo install - The Cargo Book

[Redglyph]

It's indeed a surprise, and I wasn't 100% sure about my interpretation of the code, but the issue you found confirms it.

It's a little confusing that the Cargo help gives the --locked option separately, as if it should be used with build, test, and run to use the cargo.lock file.