It is my understanding that there aren't a whole lot of portions of
the libraries/compiler which are 100% guaranteed to not change from
here on out. There are still fairly large language changes in flight
(dynamically sized types, closure reform, etc.) which could have large
impacts on how the language is used.
In addition to a the language stabilizing, there's also the factor of
libraries stabilizing. Huon's recent work on adding stability
attributes is a fantastic step in this direction though. As Rust moves
forward, the general strategy for us is to first enforce usage of the
stability attributes to prevent regressions in terms of stability
(stable functions calling unstable ones, etc.). After these safeguards
are in place, the plan is to closely scrutinize the core modules of
libstd. From the inside out, interfaces will be pruned/refactored and
flagged as #[stable]. Once an interface is #[stable], the idea is to
be very reluctant to accept modifications to existing functions, and
functions/modules flagged as such can be thought of as being
"backwards compatible" for the time being at least.
That being said, I've got a fairly large side project which has been
compiling just fine (without modifications) for nearly a month now
which is truly a record for rust. The rate of change in the language
is far less than it used to be, and library APIs are settling down a
little but, but they're still predominately in flux. As usual, Rust is
not currently in a "backwards compatible" state for nearly its entire
surface area (except for maybe the program "fn main() {}"), but it's
certainly a major goal to achieve this within a reasonable time frame.
On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 8:16 AM, Jason E. Aten <[email protected]> wrote:
> If I'm standing on the moon, looking at Earth, and watching the sunrise
> across the globe,I see that there is a daylight line that moves
> continuously, with darkness on one side and light on the other. This is a
> metaphor for development.
>
> Realizing that the line may not be sharp, and is moving continuously, I'd
> still like to understand which parts of Rust are currently mostly stable,
> and which parts are likely to change in the near and somewhat near future.
>
> Thanks for your thoughts.
>
>
> Jason
>
> --
> Jason E. Aten, Ph.D.
>
>
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> https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/rust-dev
>
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