🦀 Debian’s Rust Upgrade
Today’s issue: In Defense of Lock Poisoning, Move Expressions, and Rootless Pings in Rust
Happy new month, Rustaceans
Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving last week. Let’s Rust!
In this issue, we’ll discuss recent announcement of upcoming changes to Debian’s APT, spotlight an amazing project, and share 10 incredible links of the week.
Here’s issue 95.
MAIN NEWS
Debian’s Rust Upgrade
Months after Ubuntu migrated its coreutils to the Rust-based uutils project, Debian’s APT package manager is charting a similar course.
In a recent announcement on the debian mailing list, maintainer Julian Andres Klode outlined plans to introduce hard Rust dependencies into APT no earlier than May 2026.
This shift will mandate Rust for parsing critical formats like .deb packages, .ar archives, .tar files, and HTTP signatures used for secure package verification with the intent of replacing vulnerable C++ code with Rust’s memory-safe alternatives.
The proposal echoes Ubuntu’s Rust experiments but has ignited debate within Debian. Proponents argue it could improve safety concerns common with C++ like memory leaks and buffer overflows, making APT more resilient to exploits in a tool that serves millions of users across Linux distributions. It could also attract devs weary of C++ pitfalls, and ease maintenance on the aging codebase. .
Critics, however, decry the announcement’s top-down tone as a “decree” that stifles community input, reminiscent of Ubuntu’s past Rust-related flare-ups. A key flashpoint: the move effectively sunsets support for legacy architectures like Alpha and m68k, where Rust toolchains aren’t viable, forcing those ports to freeze on older APT versions or scramble for workarounds.
As discussions continue fueled by concerns over process, potential new bugs, and perceived corporate influence from Canonical, some worry it risks alienating Debian’s volunteer ethos.
In the end, the expected reliability gains will likely outweigh the hurdles, provided communication improves to build consensus. This is open-source in action: bold progress laced with growing pains.
For many of us, it’s a timely reminder that even battle-hardened tools must evolve or risk obsolescence. Time will tell if Debian weathers the turbulence smoothly, but the long-term security gains feel inevitable.
What’s your take on Debian’s Rust pivot?
RUST CHALLENGE 🦀
Last week we had you solve the zigzag merge challenge. If you spotted a wrong test case, kudos - we’re sorry it slipped past us. Otherwise, hats off to Marius ₿, Lore, Njuguna Mureithi, and Atul S Khot.
No challenge for you today as we want you to actively take part in this year’s Advent of Code (AOC).
We’ll be back after the 15th. In the meantime, join our private AOC leaderboard with code: 5140157-18892126.
PROJECT SPOTLIGHT 💡
Tansu
Tansu is a drop-in replacement for Apache Kafka with PostgreSQL, libSQL (SQLite), S3 or memory storage engines.
Look, Kafka’s great if you’re Netflix-scale, but for the rest of us? It’s an overkill, pricey, and a nightmare to park. Tansu fixes that with plug-and-play simplicity.
You want durable streams? S3’s got you. Need something local? Postgres or libSQL handles it without breaking a sweat. And for those “just test it” moments, memory mode is at your disposal.
Here’s What makes Tansu tick?
One Binary Rules Them All - Broker, schema registry, CLI for cat-like producing/consuming, even a proxy.
Storage Options You’ll Love - Pick S3, Postgres, or libSQL (for lightweight SQLite). Memory? For when commitment issues hit.
Schema Smackdown with Lake Perks - Enforce Avro/JSON/Protobuf schemas at the door. Valid ones? Auto-dump to Parquet in Iceberg/Delta tables.
Tansu is open-source on GitHub at https://github.com/tansu-io/tansu.
AWESOME LINKS OF THE WEEK 🔗
The Cargo team wrote a summary of what has been happening around Cargo development for the last 6 weeks which is approximately the merge window for Rust 1.92. An interview with Jan David Nose (Infrastructure Team Engineer) is out.
Niko Matsakis proposed Move Expressions for `move($expr)` in closures, explicit temporaries for ergonomic, clone-free captures in async tasks.
In an interview, Jon Seager (VP of Engineering for Ubuntu) shared lessons from Canonical’s migration of core components to Rust, including shipping uutils and sudo-rs. [video]
Drew from Filtra spoke with Pete LeVasseur, Staff Software Engineer at Toyota, about the company’s bold adoption of Rust to advance its driving technologies.
Nubskr open-sourced Walrus, a high-performance distributed log and message streaming engine that brags it’s faster than Kafka.
RustWeek’s call for papers is officially open, and is closing on December 31, 2025. Got something smart to say? Submit your talk before procrastination wins.
Jon Gjengset (author of Rust for Rustaceans) streamed the impl Rust edition of the One Billion Row Challenge. [video]
Bouke shows how to send pings in Rust without root by creating a UDP socket with the ICMP protocol flag, send your packet, and handle OS quirks.
Rain’s In defense of lock poisoning in Rust argues that poisoning keeps your program from quietly corrupting itself, and removing it just invites sneaky panics and broken invariants.
Rust Paris Meetup will be happening at Criteo on December 8th, 2025 (32 rue Blanche, 75009). To our Paris fans do make plans to attend!
CodeCrafters: Become a Better Rust Engineer
CodeCrafters created amazing Rust courses that push your skills beyond the basics.
You’ll have fun building real-world projects from scratch, including Git, Docker, Redis, Kafka, SQLite, Grep, BitTorrent, HTTP Server, an Interpreter, and DNS.
The courses are self-paced, so you can learn at your own speed.
Join for free and get 40% off when you upgrade. [affiliate]
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This issue came in late due to some uncontrollable circumstances.
That's all for now, Rustaceans.
John & Elley.