# Cargo Roadmap

The goals for this roadmap are:

- To give people a sense of what might be in Cargo over the next few years
- To share with contributors the Cargo team's priorities so we can focus our efforts
- To make sure we plan ahead for larger projects that may require an Edition

## How you can help

We are avaialble to help mentor people for
[S-accepted issues](https://doc.crates.io/contrib/issues.html#issue-status-labels)
on
[zulip](https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/246057-t-cargo)
and you can talk to us in real-time during
[Contributor Office Hours](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/wiki/Office-Hours).
If you are looking to help with one of the bigger projects mentioned here and are just starting out,
[fixing some issues](https://doc.crates.io/contrib/process/index.html#working-on-issues)
will help familiarize yourself with the process and expectations,
making things go more smoothly.
If you'd like to tackle something
[without a mentor](https://doc.crates.io/contrib/issues.html#issue-status-labels),
the expectations will be higher on what you'll need to do on your own.

## Vision

Cargo provides a best-in-class, pleasant experience in helping people go from idea to distributing a high quality Rust package. To support this, it formalizes a canonical Rust workflow for creating, maintaining, and verifying projects and consuming the projects of others.

Cargo is not a general-purpose build tool and does not solve challenges like multi-language build support or application bundling and deployment. However, it should be easy to integrate it with other build tools.

## Focus area

### Improving the contributor experience

Previously, the cargo team had a [soft feature freeze](https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2022/03/31/cargo-team-changes.html) due to the limited capacity of the team.
While this has lifted, we still need to actively work to make it easier to on-board new contributors, reduce overhead for our maintainers, and give maintainers confidence to review changes.

For example, we can improve this by
- Reducing the need for global knowledge for a change through improved componentization
- Reducing the use of bespoke tools
- Being able to leverage improvements made by others
- Increasing general knowledge of said tools\
- Improving documentation

### Finish what we started

Cargo has a large collection of
[unstable features](https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/unstable.html) and
[accepted but unimplemented RFCs](https://github.com/orgs/rust-lang/projects/36).
We need to stay focused on closing out what we've started and not get too distracted with every new idea.

### Improving the user experience

We love to see the shout outs for the role cargo plays in the quality of their experience with Rust but we want to make sure we are not standing still.
We need to always be improving the experience of using cargo in day-to-day development.

### Scaling up

The Rust community is growing and it is becoming more common for large projects to be developed with Cargo.
We need to be sure to meet these projects where they are at.

### Improving Supply-chain security

While cargo protects against some attacks,
there is room for further improvement so people can develop with confidence.

## Plan

This is going to be less commitments of what will be done by a certain time and more to communicate the status,
in particular what projects have advocates within the cargo team to help drive them and people to implement them.
We can't do this all on our own.
To help see this through,
we'll need people to help design, drive the RFC process, implement, and mentor others through this process.
Even then, there might be times when we need to put something on hold until a new idea comes along or another project gets implemented that unexpectedly benefits other projects.
For example, [`[lints]` table](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/5034) was greatly helped by [workspace inheritancee](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/8415).

Topics related to test are not included, leaving that to the [Testing DevEx team](https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/dev-tools#Testing%20DevEx%20team).

### Active

Someone is actively working to drive this work forward.

[Cargo script](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/12207)
- Focus area: Improving the user experience
- Motivation: See the [eRFC](https://rust-lang.github.io/rfcs/3424-cargo-script.html)
- Advocate: Ed Page
- Completed behind `-Zscript`:
- Prototype
- In-work:
- [T-cargo RFC](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3502)
- [T-lang RFC](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3502)

[Per-user artifact cache](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/5931)
- Focus area: Improving the user experience
- Motivation: Faster build times lowering the barrier for code reuse
- Advocate: Ed or Arlo?
- Completed:
- Private prototype
- In-work:
- Merge of above

[Cache garbage collection](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/12633)
- Focus area: Improving the user experience
- Motivation: Make it easier to avoid disk space issues
- Advocate: Eric Huss
- Completed behind `-Zgc`:
- Global cache garbage collection
- In-work:
- CLI design
- target directory garbage collection

[Happy path for developers on older rustc](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/pre-rfc-msrv-aware-resolver/19871)
- Focus area: Improving the user experience
- Motivation: See [Pre-RFC](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/pre-rfc-msrv-aware-resolver/19871)
- Advocate: Ed Page
- Completed behind `-Zmsrv-policy`:
- MSRV-aware `cargo add`
- Resolver algorithm changes
- In-work:
- [Pre-RFC](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/pre-rfc-msrv-aware-resolver/19871) and RFC

[Public/private dependencies](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3516)
- Focus area: Finish what we started
- Advocate: Ed Page
- Completed behind `public-dependency` cargo feature:
- [RFC #1977](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/1977)
- All but the resolver side of RFC #1977
- In-work:
- [RFC #3516](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3516)

[Cargo "bill of materials" (SBOM)](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/pre-rfc-cargo-sbom/19842/20)
- Focus area: Improving Supply-chain security
- Advocate: Arlo
- In-work:
- [Pre-RFC](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/pre-rfc-cargo-sbom/19842/20) and RFC

[Dependency resolution hooks](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/7193)
- Focus area: Improving Supply-chain security
- Advocate: Jacob Finkelman

[Migrating from git2 to gitoxide](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/11813)
- Focus area: Scaling up
- Advocate: Sebastian Thiel (not a cargo team member)
- Status: See [zulip](https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/246057-t-cargo/topic/.60gitoxide.60.20integration.20updates/near/315245884)

[`features` metadata](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3416)
- Focus area: Improving the user experience
- Motivation: Make features easier to consume
- Advocate: Ed Page
- In-work:
- [RFC #3416](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3416) (allow metadata)
- [RFC #3485](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3485) (descriptions)
- [RFC #3487](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3487) (visibility)

`features` evolution
- Focus area: Scaling up
- Motivation: For long term maintenance of packages, we need improved workflows for evolving features
- Advocate: Ed Page
- In-work:
- [RFC #3486](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3486) (deprecation)
- Note: solving "migrating built-in logic to a feature" part of this is in the Needs Design category

[Nested packages](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3452)
- Focus area: Scaling up
- Motivation: Lower the overhead for splitting out a package by removing the release process to it
- Advocate: Ed Page
- In-work:
- [RFC #3452](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3452)

[User-controlled diagnostics](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/12235)
- Focus area: Scaling up
- Advocate: Scott Schafer

Integrate the core of [`cargo-edit`](https://github.com/killercup/cargo-edit/) into cargo
- Focus area: Improving the user experience
- Advocate: Ed Page
- Completed
- `cargo add`
- `cargo remove`
- [Design for `cargo upgrade`](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/12425)
- In-work:
- Implementation for `cargo upgrade`

Componentization of cargo
- Focus area: Improving the contributor experience
- Advocate: Ed Page
- In-work:
- [`Cargo.toml` schema package](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/12801)

[Rebuild diagnostics](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/2904)
- Advocate: Weihang Lo

### Ready-to-develop

A cargo team member has committed to advocating for this work but we need someone to step up to implement it.

[`cargo publish` for workspaces](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/1169)
- Focus area: Scaling up
- Advocate: Ed Page

[Auto-generate completions](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/6645)
- Focus area: Improving the contributor experience
- Motivation: So we don't have to be vigilent about them going stale and ensure more correctness
- Advocate: Ed Page
- Remaining:
- [clap-rs/clap#3166](https://github.com/clap-rs/clap/issues/3166)

Generalize cargo's test assertion code
- Focus area: Improving the contributor experience
- Advocate: Ed Page
- Remaining:
- [Add CARGO_WORKSPACE_DIR](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/3946)
- [Inline snapshotting in snapbox](https://github.com/assert-rs/trycmd/issues/221)
- [Structured assertions in snapbox](https://github.com/assert-rs/trycmd/issues/92)
- [Find a solution for order-independent assertions between cargo and snapbox](https://github.com/assert-rs/trycmd/issues/151)

### Needs design work

A cargo team member has committed to advocating for this work but we need someone to step up to drive the design work forward.
Design work

[OS-native config/cache directories (ie XDG support)](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/1734)
- Focus area: Improving the user experience
- Advocate: Ed
- Remaining:
- [Phase 1 Pre-RFC](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/pre-rfc-split-cargo-home/19747) and RFC
- Phase 2 Pre-RFC and RFC

[Rebuild diagnostics](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/2904)
- Focus area: Improving the user experience
- Advocate: Ed

[Global, mutually exclusive features](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/pre-rfc-mutually-excusive-global-features/19618)
- Focus area: Scaling up
- Advocate: Ed

### Stalled out

No cargo team member has commited to advocating for this work.
Without someone going the extra mile to drive this forward without an advocate,
the cargo team will need to decide whether it should be postponed or rejected.

[Unstable features](https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/unstable.html#list-of-unstable-features) not mentioned above
- Focus area: Finish what we started

[T-cargo RFCs](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aopen+label%3AT-cargo) not mentioned above
- Focus area: Finish what we started