this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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Rust Programming
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It all depends on how "finished" the project is, and how much it has to track a moving ecosystem.
There's a lot of crates that you can probably write once and be done with it. Like, a unit converter that's not been updated since the first version of Rust is probably still just fine to use. A meter and a feet won't change length anytime soon.
Even a GTK app that's not been updated in 5 years that might not be a problem at all as long as it compiles. Windows is full of apps that were written 30 years ago and are still shipped basically unchanged. The calculator and notepad were two examples until Windows 10/11.
Another example: an FTP library or client. It's basically a dead protocol at this point, so even if it's not been updated in years, it's likely fine and there's not much to improve on.
It really depends on what it does and how much the rest of the world around it is changing and how complete the code is already.
This hits the nail on the head.
Some crates, especially things like data structures, are just "finished" at some point.
Then again, if those kinds of crates have deps, the deps should be updated semi regularly.
Its good to use cargo-audit to find indirect security/safety issues.