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.
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.
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!
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:
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.
I contribute to packaging. But thanks for teaching me about something I know already.
Now try to get something using an obsolete version of some python module into Fedora or Debian and let me know how it goes… It would not be accepted as it is. It'd be patched to work with a current one or just rejected.
I never said a single word about Python. Whether you contribute to packaging or not has nothing to do with whether you're posting false information. If anything, it makes what you've said worse. You should know better.
Just stop spreading misinformation. And the courteous thing to do is to acknowledge an error when it's pointed out instead of doubling down and redirecting as if no error was made.
> Using lock files is a good way to make sure your software never ends up in a distribution and in the hands of users.
> And how much rust software is packaged in distributions? Almost none.
> They haven't figured out the procedures
You're clearly talking about Rust in the second two comments. Your original comment was just a general pronouncement about lock files. You could perhaps be given the benefit of the doubt that you were only thinking about Python, but someone else interpreted your comment broadly to apply to any language with lock files. If you really only meant it to be specific Python, one would reasonably expect you to say, "Oh, sorry, I was only talking about Python. Not Rust. Their situation might be different."
But no. You doubled down and started spouting nonsense. And you continue to do so!
> Where dependency pinning is the norm, there is a culture of breaking API compatibility.
Rust does not have this problem. It is the norm to use lock files for Rust programs, but there is no culture of "breaking API compatibility" without appropriate signaling via semver.
It's easy for you to go off and spout bullshit. You've even been corrected by someone else who maintains distro packages. But it's a lot harder to correct it. You wriggle and squirm and rationalize and deflect.
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.
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.
With all due respect, I don't think you're correct.