First time I hear about compile times being an issue with Rust.
Is that a general problem with bigger projects or can you identify language features that add specifically to the problem?
Otherwise, it’s a solid language choice. L
I've splitted a 20k+LOC Rust project into multiple crates and compilation time improved a lot (still slow compared to other languages) but it's now manageable.
Elaborating the hardware (systemverilog) I'm working on (about a year of work from scratch, nothing fancy) takes 8 minutes.
The full build to a bit file that can be loaded into hardware is an NP-hard optimization problem, so as your design approaches the limits of either the desired clock speed or the amount of space in the chip, it can become very slow.
Placing (not routing!) takes around 24 hours since we need to run in a larger environment than just the block level to get realistic timing reports