On 2024-01-11 at 11:45:07, Sam James wrote:

Something I'm a bit concerned about is that right now, neither
rustc_codegen_gcc nor gccrs are ready for use here.

We've had trouble getting things wired up for rustc_codegen_gcc
- which is not to speak against their wonderful efforts - because
the Rust community hasn't yet figured out how to handle things which
pure rustc supports yet. See
e.g. https://github.com/rust-lang/libc/pull/3032.

Is this simply library support in the libc crate?  That's very easy to add.

I think care should be taken in citing rustc_codegen_gcc and gccrs
as options for alternative platforms for now. They will hopefully
be great options in the future, but they aren't today, and they probably
won't be in the next 6 months at the least.

What specifically is missing for rust_codegen_gcc?  I know gccrs is not
ready at the moment, but I was under the impression that
rust_codegen_gcc was at least usable.  I'm aware it requires some
patches to GCC, but distros should be able to carry those.

If rust_codegen_gcc isn't viable, then I agree we should avoid making
Rust mandatory, but I'd like to learn more.
-- 
brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them)
Toronto, Ontario, CA