My surprise level at your finding is low. I regularly start from scratch in embedded rust for precisely this scenario. A typical response is "Why not use [reticulum-rs] etc.". Your elegant description could be described with the "But we have McDonald's at home" meme.

There are many cases where a library will be posted online, be mentioned in a blog post, and demonstrated in a demonstration workflow. If you try to use it for practical means, it becomes immediately clear it is "totaled" or easier to start over than fix or adapt it.