Re: Rust

[David Craven]

> Can we reasonably expect to bootstrap it from source,
> using a series of previous Rust versions, or using an
> alternative implementation?

Currently as Jelle said no. But there is [0] that may be a
viable option in the future.

> Having crates available as normal Guix packages is the
> best option for Guix users: uniform interface, the ability
> to use ‘guix environment’ and all the tools, transactional
> upgrade and rollback, etc.

I think with a cargo plugin that interacts with the guix daemon,
we could achive the same advantages. If we want to package
servo (mozillas experimental rust webbrowser) we could add
a guix package for servo, specify it uses the cargo build
system and that would call cargo build-guix.
For other rust projects (that don't need packaging) it could add
a project profile and add the symlinks in $PROJECT_DIR/target/.

I don't think we should dismiss this possibility straight away...
Rust contributors have been very helpful with issues that arose on
nixos. I think it may be even possible that at some point in the
future cargo build could detect if there is a guix/nix daemon
available and use that as the storage backend instead of
$HOME/.cargo/registry.

[0] https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc