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0 pointsraggi7mo ago0 comments

Those pages are out of date, and AsyncDrop is in progress: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/126482

I think "practically rudderless" here is fairly misinformed and a little harmful/rude to all the folks doing tons of great work still.

It's a shame there are some stale pages around and so on, but they're not good measures of the state of the project or ecosystem.

The problem of holding objects across async points is also partially implemented in this unstable lint marker which is used by some projects: https://dev-doc.rust-lang.org/unstable-book/language-feature...

You also get a similar effect in multi-threaded runtimes by not arbitrarily making everything in your object model Send and instead designing your architecture so that most things between wake-ups don't become arbitrarily movable references.

These aren't perfect mitigations, but some tools.

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5 comments · 2 top-level

bigstrat20037mo ago· 2 in thread

In fairness, if you're a layman to the rust development process (as I am, so I'm speaking from personal experience here) it's damn near impossible to figure out the status of things. There tracking issues, RFCs, etc which is very confusing as an outsider and gives no obvious place to look to find out the current status of a proposal. I'm sure there is a logic to it and that if I spent the time to learn it would make sense. But it is really hard to approach for someone like me.

kibwen7mo ago

If you want to find out the status of something, the best bet is to go to the Rust Zulip and ask around: https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/ . Most Rust initiatives are pushed forward by volunteers who are happy to talk about what they're working on, but who only periodically write status reports on tracking issues (usually in response to someone asking them what the status is). Rust isn't a company where documentation is anyone's job, it's just a bunch of people working on stuff, for better or worse.

surajrmal7mo ago

To be fair, this information is hard to come by in companies as well, unless it's being tracked and reported by program managers. I wonder if it would be sensible for the rust foundation to use some funds to pay folks to help track and organize efforts which the wider community is deeply interested in better. I care about a lot of the things mentioned in this thread, but the cost of paying attention or needing to bother folks on chatrooms to get status prevents me from really staying abreast of the latest.

cogman107mo ago· 1 in thread

> I think "practically rudderless" here is fairly misinformed and a little harmful/rude to all the folks doing tons of great work still.

That great work is mostly opaque on the outside.

What's been noticeable as an observer is that a lot of the well known names associated with rust no longer work on it and there's been a large amount of turnover around it.

That manifests in things like this case where work was in progress up until ~2021 and then was ultimately backburnered while the entire org was reshuffled. (I'd note the dates on the MCP as Feb 2024).

I can't tell exactly how much work or what direction it went in from 2021 to 2024 but it does look apparent that the work ultimately got shifted between multiple individuals.

I hope rust is in a better spot. But I also don't think I was being unfair in pointing out how much momentum got wrecked when Mozilla pulled support.

raggiOP7mo ago

The language team tends to look at these kinds of challenges and drive them to a root cause, which spins off a tree of work to adjust the core language to support what's required by the higher level pieces, once that work is done then the higher level projects are unblocked (example: RPIT for async drop).

That's not always super visible if you're not following the working groups or in contact with folks working on the stuff. It's entirely fair that they're prioritizing getting work done than explaining low level language challenges to everyone everywhere.

I think you're seeing a lack of data and trying to use that as a justification to fit a story that you like, more than seeing data that is derivative of the story that you like. Of course some people were horribly disrupted by the changes, but language usage also expanded substantially during and since that time, and there are many team members employed by many other organizations, and many independents too.

And there are more docs, anyway:

https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-project-goals/2024h2/async.... https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-project-goals/2025h1/async.... https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-project-goals/2025h2/field-... https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-project-goals/2025h2/evolvi... https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-project-goals/2025h2/goals....

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