To me, the two major problems are:
- no namespaces
Someone uploads “serde2”? that’s blocked forever. Someone uploads a typo version of a popular package? Too bad for you, learn how to type.
- the github connection
If you want to contribute to crates.io you’re bound to github. No gitlab, codeberg, gitee, sourcehut, etc.
Not sure if there are any other problems, but those two seem like the biggest things and #1 is AFAIK not something they ever want to change + it would be difficult to as one would need a migration strategy.
If Github isn’t used for source control, why on earth is it the only auth provider?
Why has crates.io given Microsoft the ability to control who can and cannot publish Rust code?
Namespacing is whatever, but IMO the real issue is the disproportionate and unnecessary amount of power given to a company known for pushing monopolies.
While I don’t want to deny the problems of not having namespaces, they will introduce a new set of problems. One issue with Github and similar platforms with namespaces is that a search for a repo turns up multiple projects with the same name under different namespaces. It’s always a confusion as to which one is canonical. Another problem is that people are now going to name squat namespaces instead of project names. Imagine somebody registers the serde namespace. Their crates may be mistaken as the canonical one.
Apparently there’s an effort underway. I don’t have any more context than this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38020117
I will say that I actually like the flat namespace, but don’t have a strong opinion
Why should I believe this?
I followed the link in echelon’s HN profile to their GitHub profile. It’s the same name, like you’d expect, but I had to check.
If they were a member of the Rust project, they’d have an entry in the rust-lang/team repository, and they don’t. The fact that they’ve written some code in the Rust language doesn’t automatically make them trustworthy, or give them information about what happens in closed council meetings.
Eh, they could change #1 if they allow current non-namespaced packages but don’t allow new ones. That’s a pretty lazy migration strategy, but they could take it a step further and allow aliases (e.g. serde can be namespace/serde, and that’s set on the serde package).
But the bigger issue is that the devs don’t want to support namespaces.
#2 is the stronger argument imo. A package manager should not rely on a single external source.
I know a lot of people want namespaces. And I think it would be nice for a bigger project to have an obvious way to show which packages are part of this big project, and which are not. For example the different serde serialization formats would not need to be listed in the docs, but simply be present in one single serde-formats namespaces.
It it does fuck all for type squatting. Sure, now I’m safe from getting malicious code by doing tokio/tokiu-http, but tokiu/tokio-http can still be malicious!
The only solution to type squatting would be a checksum. So instead of adding Tokio to your toml file you’d have to add e.g. tokio-fld, with the fld part being some kind of check that is derived from the name. Similar to a hash, all names that are similar to tokio would get a wildly different suffix.
It it does fuck all for type squatting. Sure, now I’m safe from getting malicious code by doing tokio/tokiu-http, but tokiu/tokio-http can still be malicious!
You are indeed correct. I hadn’t considered that!
The checksum idea might work 🤔 That definitely could be possible with the new registry.
I think you could get it with a signature, just like with Linux repos. Basically, the org would sign the metadata so you know it came from that org’s key.
That way you’d need both a malicious name and access to the key. You don’t need the suffix here, just a section in the toml that lets you list keys per org, and if it changes, you’d get prompted to update it.
I don’t think changing is the problem, incorrect initial entry is the problem. Linux has centralized package maintainers, cargo does not (or am I wrong?)
Or do you mean that adding a namespace would require a key and then all crates in that namespace are unlocked? Then only the initial cargo add would be dangerous, all subsequent ones in the same namespace would not require manual confirmation.
Yes, I’m saying that adding a namespace would require a key, and all releases would be signed with that key. That works similarly to installing a separate repo in a Linux distro, you’d import the key and mark it as trusted, and then signatures would be verified for each download.
So yes, only the initial cargo add would be “dangerous,” and there would be a prompt for the user to verify that they have the right key (which they could verify on the project homepage).
