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This was linked from the top comment on the Rust subreddit: https://wiki.alopex.li/LetsBeRealAboutDependencies

I think it makes a good point that some of the difference here is just perception due to dependencies in C/C++ being less immediately visible since they're dynamically loaded. To some degree that is a plus though as you likely trust the maintainers of your OS distribution to provide stable, supported libraries.

As other commenters have said, perhaps this is an area where the Rust maintainers could provide some kind of extended standard library where they don't guarantee backwards compatibility forever, but do provide guarantees about ongoing fixes for security issues.

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> This was linked from the top comment on the Rust subreddit: https://wiki.alopex.li/LetsBeRealAboutDependencies

It was also posted here, shortly before this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43934343

(And several times in the past, too.)

> I think it makes a good point that some of the difference here is just perception due to dependencies in C/C++ being less immediately visible since they're dynamically loaded.

The point wasn't so much about the loading mechanism, but about the fact that the system (especially on Linux) provides them for you; a good amount come pre-installed, and the rest go through a system package manager so you don't have to worry about the language failing to have a good package system.

> some of the difference here is just perception due to dependencies in C/C++ being less immediately visible since they're dynamically loaded.

Not in my case. I manually compile all the dependencies (either because I need to cross-compile, or because I may need to patch them, etc). So I clearly see all the transitive dependencies I need in C++. And I need a lot less than in Rust, by a long shot.

Part of the rust dependency issue is that the compiler only multithreads at the crate level currently (slowly being improved on nightly, but there's still some bugs before they can roll out the parallel compiler), so most libraries split themselves up into a ton of small crates because otherwise they just take too long to compile.

edit: Also, `cargo-vet` is useful for distributed auditing of crates. There's also `cargo-crev`, but afaik it doesn't have buy in from the megacorps like cargo-vet and last I checked didn't have as many/as consistent reviews.

https://github.com/mozilla/cargo-vet

https://github.com/crev-dev/cargo-crev

Can't believe I'd never heard of cargo vet before, that sounds really promising!

> so most libraries split themselves up into a ton of small crates because otherwise they just take too long to compile.

In practice, does this make it feasible to pick and choose the pieces you actually need?

It can do. Additionally, because each part is now smaller it's now easier to ensure that each part, in isolation, does what it says on the tin. It also means that other projects can reuse the parts. An example of the last point would be the Regex crate.

Regex is split into subcrates, one of which is regex-syntax: the parser. But that crate is also a dependency of over 150 other crates, including lalrpop, proptest, treesitter, and polars. So other projects have benefited from Regex being split up.

Yes, when done properly. Rust has "feature flags" that can selectively enable dependencies, and effectively act as `#ifdef` guards in the code.

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