Rust Stability Debate

The cluster focuses on debates about Rust's backwards compatibility, stability guarantees since the 1.0 release, and experiences with breaking changes in the compiler, standard library, and ecosystem.

➡️ Stable 0.6x Programming Languages
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Keywords

RFC e.g lang.org Node.js blog.rust versions.svg Stability.html OldIterator ISO URL rust breaking changes changes compiler stable breaking language compatibility library unstable

Sample Comments

MrJohz Oct 23, 2023 View on HN

Rust has fairly strong backwards-compatibility guarantees, so that sort of claim surprises me. Can you give an example of the code you wrote four months ago that won't compile using the latest stable toolchain?

steveklabnik Oct 20, 2016 View on HN

Rust has been stable for a year and a half, it won't "change drastically" like that.

sjapkee Sep 4, 2019 View on HN

Rust has no backward compatibility, a very disputable feature with language revisions when compiling, and it is rare for you to have a large package from a stable branch without loading the package from the test branch. So in its present form it looks interesting, but it is absolutely not adapted to use outside of pet projects.

paavohtl Mar 19, 2021 View on HN

Rust has a very strict backwards compatibility policy, and as a result has had ~0 breaking changes since 1.0, with the notable exception of opt-in Rust 2018 edition. Best practises might get out of date, but generally speaking nothing breaks between releases.

mlindner Feb 14, 2021 View on HN

What are those? I thought Rust was finally stabilizing and stopped so many rapid fire changes.

tialaramex Oct 4, 2025 View on HN

How is this different from the existing situation that Rust remains compatible since Rust 1.0 over a decade ago?

pornel Sep 25, 2022 View on HN

A random person on github abandoning their pet project is not the kind of language stability we're talking about here. It's not the kind of complaint you'd write to the ISO committee.You may have run into a project using nightly Rust, which is an explicitly unstable version for testing of experimental not-yet-finished features. Using it requires users to intentionally opt out of having language stability. C++ also has GNU and Clang extensions and experimental implementat

rspeer Jun 20, 2017 View on HN

No, Rust went 1.0 a while ago. They will not make breaking changes to the language until a hypothetical 2.0 release, which at the moment they are not considering.Of course the standard library changes; it's not a dead language.New features, including new functions in the standard library, are marked 'unstable' when they are introduced. Unstable features have to be explicitly requested, indicating that the programmer is aware that their functionality may change before they&#x

cynicalsecurity Feb 21, 2025 View on HN

Rust changes every few months. It's simply not a mature language or people behind it have no idea what they are doing.

Ar-Curunir Aug 13, 2020 View on HN

> problem with rust is that they make breaking changes in their compiler and spec every release.this is demonstrably false