Rust Is Coming To Debian's APT Package Manager (itsfoss.com)
(Sunday November 09, 2025 @11:04AM (EditorDavid)
from the apt-get dept.)
- Reference: 0180013662
- News link: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/11/09/0232234/rust-is-coming-to-debians-apt-package-manager
- Source link: https://itsfoss.com/news/rust-integration-for-apt/
A maintainer of Debian's Advanced Package Tool (APT) "has [1]announced plans to introduce hard Rust dependencies into APT starting May 2026," [2]reports the blog It's FOSS .
> The integration targets critical areas like parsing .deb , .ar , and tar files plus HTTP signature verification using Sequoia. [APT maintainer Julian Andres Klode] said these components "would strongly benefit from memory safe languages and a stronger approach to unit testing."
>
> He also gave a firm message to maintainers of Debian ports: "If you maintain a port without a working Rust toolchain, please ensure it has one within the next 6 months, or sunset the port."
>
> The reasoning is straightforward. Debian wants to move forward with modern tools rather than being held back by legacy architecture... Debian ports running on CPU architectures without Rust compiler support have six months to add proper toolchains. If they can't meet this deadline, those ports will need to be discontinued . As a result, some obscure or legacy platforms may lose official support. For most users on mainstream architectures like x86_64 and ARM, nothing changes. Your APT will simply become more secure and reliable under the hood.
It's FOSS argues that "If done right, this could significantly strengthen APT's security and code quality."
And [3]the blog Linuxiac also supports the move . "By embedding Rust into APT, the distro joins a growing number of major open-source projects, such as the Linux kernel, Firefox, and systemd, that are gradually adopting Rust. And if I had to guess, I'd say this is just one of the first steps toward even deeper Rust integration in this legendary distribution, which is a good thing."
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2025/10/msg00285.html?ref=itsfoss.com
[2] https://itsfoss.com/news/rust-integration-for-apt/
[3] https://linuxiac.com/debian-apt-package-manager-to-integrate-rust-code-by-may-2026/
> The integration targets critical areas like parsing .deb , .ar , and tar files plus HTTP signature verification using Sequoia. [APT maintainer Julian Andres Klode] said these components "would strongly benefit from memory safe languages and a stronger approach to unit testing."
>
> He also gave a firm message to maintainers of Debian ports: "If you maintain a port without a working Rust toolchain, please ensure it has one within the next 6 months, or sunset the port."
>
> The reasoning is straightforward. Debian wants to move forward with modern tools rather than being held back by legacy architecture... Debian ports running on CPU architectures without Rust compiler support have six months to add proper toolchains. If they can't meet this deadline, those ports will need to be discontinued . As a result, some obscure or legacy platforms may lose official support. For most users on mainstream architectures like x86_64 and ARM, nothing changes. Your APT will simply become more secure and reliable under the hood.
It's FOSS argues that "If done right, this could significantly strengthen APT's security and code quality."
And [3]the blog Linuxiac also supports the move . "By embedding Rust into APT, the distro joins a growing number of major open-source projects, such as the Linux kernel, Firefox, and systemd, that are gradually adopting Rust. And if I had to guess, I'd say this is just one of the first steps toward even deeper Rust integration in this legendary distribution, which is a good thing."
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2025/10/msg00285.html?ref=itsfoss.com
[2] https://itsfoss.com/news/rust-integration-for-apt/
[3] https://linuxiac.com/debian-apt-package-manager-to-integrate-rust-code-by-may-2026/
Missing Rust Language Specification (Score:3)
by crunchy_one ( 1047426 )
Until Rust has a published standard language specification, it should not be embedded in APT or other the Linux kernel. Full stop.
Re: (Score:2)
by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 )
Apt is a package manager, adding one more language to it isn't a big deal. A lot of crap is there, moving in, moving out, whatever.
For an important API, yeah, it is probably a good idea if that API is something that you're told you can rely on, but I don't think this is still the case with the Linux kernel, where rust is more of a playground.
So your concern seems a bit premature.
Rustification (Score:5, Insightful)
A complete rewrite in a new language is just as likely to introduce new bugs as updating the existing code. Debian's existing apt isn't broken, it's just in a language that some maintainer doesn't like, and that maintainer thinks they have the right to demand that all Debian systems must support their favorite language or be discontinued. I wonder how that maintainer would feel if their favorite language was itself deprecated from Debian and all software that was written in it was forced to change languages or be removed?
The only thing Debian users are getting out of this is a man's self inflated ego and the loss of support for some architectures.
Re: (Score:3)
Is that what this means? It's very common for a program to have components in a mix of languages. Are they really saying that the entire program has to be written in Rust, or are there just specific files that have to be there for integration purposes?
Re:Rustification (Score:4, Informative)
From his reply to a remark on the mailing list [1]https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2025/10/msg00288.html [debian.org]:
> Rust is already a hard requirement on all Debian release
> architectures and ports except for alpha, hppa, m68k, and
> sh4 (which do not provide sqv).
Looks like it's already a thing and thus inevitable. I just hope simple, straightforward software like openbox, remind, Xpad, won't break in the future.
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2025/10/msg00288.html
Re: (Score:1)
How does this work on small embedded systems that lack the ability to even build rust? I don’t think a powerful enough RISC-V board exists to compile it natively. That now means RISC-V is dependent on amd64.
Re: (Score:2)
If you can't build Rust that means you can't build C, C++, Python, Ruby, Perl, PHP, etc. Also, cross-compilation is a thing.