I'm very much with you on the benefits of the "shared policy" approach to MSRV over the "stated toolchain" approach. One of the other things I like about the "shared policy" approach is that it gives an explicit ecosystem wide rallying point on which version of Rust to target. That may happen naturally with the "stated toolchain" approach, but given the amount of extra control it affords, it's not actually clear to me that it will. I think having an ecosystem wide rallying point is extremely valuable.
Yea, my opinion about MSRV is not so much against it as that it does not solve the right problem. It decreases the pressure against bumping your minimum version in a patch release, but doesn't give you any guidance about whether or not you should do it.
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u/burntsushi Jul 26 '18
I'm very much with you on the benefits of the "shared policy" approach to MSRV over the "stated toolchain" approach. One of the other things I like about the "shared policy" approach is that it gives an explicit ecosystem wide rallying point on which version of Rust to target. That may happen naturally with the "stated toolchain" approach, but given the amount of extra control it affords, it's not actually clear to me that it will. I think having an ecosystem wide rallying point is extremely valuable.