I said "diverges significantly", that comes on both plus and minus. Right now, Rust can be faster sometimes, but is also slower sometimes. It just depends.

I think you two are talking at cross-purposes. You are correct that building the project would require Rust. Your parent is correct that, with a pre-built binary, you don't need any Rust-specific stuff installed to make this work.

Building from source is usual, of course, given the lack of a stable ABI.