this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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serde_derive now ships a precompiled binary. This made a lot of people angry. The crate maintainer finally locked the issue.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

To me, the fact that the issue was just outright dismissed by the maintainer without really answering any of the legitimate concerns raised (disregarding the unnecessary personal attacks in a few comments) is pretty concerning. And now the issue has been locked without a really good response.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Can someone explain why one would want to precompile procedural macros? Don't they get compiled only once anyways, when compiling a dependent crate for the first time? So compile time should be not that relevant?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You’re correct, and that is part of the controversy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

One of the main reasons would be to try and hide what’s in it

If, for example, you wanted to add tracking code into the generated code, and knew people would stop using your product if they found out

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is there anything confirmed yet? Like what is inside this precompiled binary?

[–] Anders429 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As far as I know, no one has yet been able to reproduce the binary with the source code, so I don't think the contents of it are confirmed at all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Tracking bullshit is very easy to find. Check for networking syscalls and done.

[–] Anders429 6 points 1 year ago

If someone does fork serde, can they at least make it so it actually follows semver?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Thanks, I hadn't seen this elsewhere, glad to know about it.