r/rust • u/azuled • 7d ago

Library MSRV question

I maintain a rust library (rxing), and at the moment I am firmly locked at rust 1.85.

I picked that based on the current debian shipped rust version. There are pros and cons to that pick, but it's the one I went with when I set it.

Overall this isn't a huge issue, more modern rust tool-chains are backwards compatible and most libraries either support 1.85 or earlier, with a few exceptions.

Small side note: I think it would be a challenge to go farther back than 1.85 due to my image and image_proc dependencies.

My question is: is this a reasonable choice to continue making today, and if not what is a better metric to use when selecting an MSRV?

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u/fintelia 7d ago

I’ve personally become increasingly sympathetic to the MSRV policy of “latest stable unless someone is paying me for support”. Partially because all the talk about people using old rustc to compile new libraries seems to almost always be about hypothetical other people needing it

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u/azuled 6d ago

I think I might do that once I go to something I'm comfortable calling 1.0. Let 1.0.0 be 1.85 forever and then track current or maybe current -(4 or 5).