Unable to Build Debian Package With rustc 1.70

[Arszilla]

Hey there.

I am trying to package vopono for Kali Linux but facing a small issue. SInce I am not that well-versed in Rust, I wanted to ask for assistance here regarding the matter.

To build vopono, I have to use rustc and cargo packages, which are 1.70.0 and 1.69.1 respectively. I am building the package with the following debian/rules file:

#!/usr/bin/make -f

#export DH_VERBOSE = 1

export HOME=$(CURDIR)/debian/cargo_home
export CARGO_HOME=$(CURDIR)/debian/cargo_home

%:
	dh $@

override_dh_auto_build:
	cargo build --release

In theory and based on README.md, rustc being 1.43.0+ is more than enough. However, I get the following error:

error: package `clap_builder v4.5.2` cannot be built because it requires rustc 1.74 or newer, while the currently active rustc version is 1.70.0
Either upgrade to rustc 1.74 or newer, or use
cargo update -p clap_builder@4.5.2 --precise ver
where `ver` is the latest version of `clap_builder` supporting rustc 1.70.0
make[1]: *** [debian/rules:12: override_dh_auto_build] Error 101
make[1]: Leaving directory '/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>'
make: *** [debian/rules:9: binary] Error 2
dpkg-buildpackage: error: debian/rules binary subprocess returned exit status 2

Now, I don't really know how to get the build process to respect the rustc version available on Kali/Debian repositories. Can I request your assistance with this matter?

TIA

EDIT

I have tried patching Cargo.toml to specify the version of clap (because clap_builder and clap_lex are dependencies of clap):

diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml
index acf075d..5657382 100644
--- a/Cargo.toml
+++ b/Cargo.toml
@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ anyhow = "1"
 directories-next = "2"
 log = "0.4"
 pretty_env_logger = "0.5"
-clap = { version = "4", features = ["derive"] }
+clap = { version = "4.4.18", features = ["derive"] }
 which = "6"
 dialoguer = "0.11"
 compound_duration = "1"

However, despite the patch (placed in debian/patches/patch-clap.patch) being applied, cargo build --release somehow manages to pull clap@4.5.4, which prevents the use of 4.4.18, which is compatible with rustc v1.70.0.

[Arszilla]

So, a small update. In theory, using the following override in debian/rules seems to work:

override_dh_auto_build:
	cargo fetch
	cargo update -p clap@4.5.4 --precise 4.4.18
	cargo build --release

However, the generated package is empty apparently, but that's a different issue/not related to vopono per se. Sadly, this "fix" is a bit dirty, and I am curious if there's anything better that's "cleaner" that could be done?

[jamesmcm]

.deb packages are built in the Github Actions CI here on the Releases page - do those binaries work?

Otherwise for building, the best option is to install rustup and get the latest version that way.

When Rust 2024 is released it might improve this a bit with the Minimum Support Rust Version (MSRV) tracking - rust-lang/rust#123749 - although it'll take a while to be rolled out (e.g. across vopono's dependencies).

But in general it's a bit like glibc - your best option is to upgrade, or use compatible pre-built binaries.

[Arszilla]

Hey - sorry for the lack of clarification. I am building the Debian packages for Kali Linux, as per https://bugs.kali.org/view.php?id=7782 - thus they follow a bit of a different rule/policy (AFAIK) when it comes to packaging Rust-based tools.

By default, Debian's packaging guidelines requires/recommends the use of rustc and cargo, instead of rustup (which is more up to date). Hence me using those 2, instead of rustup.

Currently, the override_dh_auto_build I shared above works. I will be investigating on actually packaging the crate, as per https://salsa.debian.org/rust-team/debcargo-conf - to move the package to Debian (which will eventually arrive to Kali Linux via Debian Testing) - but I wanted to get a better understanding of why Cargo.toml would not respect the version of rustc available on the host while getting the dependencies for vopono.