Cargo pre-planning: workflow

[nrc]

• templates/generate
• cargo add, etc.
• metabuild (https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/cargo/reference/unstable.html#metabuild decl build scripts to help building native deps)
• post-install scripts (rfc: make cargo install extensible rfcs#2376)
• other cargo install issues

@joshtriplett, @Xanewok, @withoutboats

[nrc]

ping @joshtriplett, @Xanewok, @withoutboats

Some starter questions (please start discussion of your own too):

• what are the kind of use cases we're hoping to support here?
• how much overlap is there between these features?
• how big is the design space for metabuild? Are we likely to need months or years of iteration
• what is the status of templates/generate?
• how are these features surfaced to the user?

[nrc]

cc @killercup and @ashleygwilliams (for cargo add and templates, respectively)

[killercup]

Re cargo-add: This might be a mentoring opportunity if we want it to be. Cf. rust-lang/cargo#5611

[ashleygwilliams]

templates/generate is moving on slowly but surely, the biggest issue we have is trying to template projects that have other template systems in them- is this going to be part of the cargo team work? if so i'd really love to continue working on it and potentially onboard a second maintainer, it would be very helpful :)

[ashleygwilliams]

i also have the rfc for post-install scripts- if someone from the cargo team is particularly working on that i would love to work with them to improve the RFC, the process stalled a bit iirc

[nrc]

Notes from discussion in meeting:

• cargo edit - issues with parsers - we would need to work out how to integrate them
• metadata scripts might want to use their own toml parser
• we could share the lexer at least?
• cargo new/generate might want to integrate with registries
• if cargo new works with workspaces, then it would need edit-like functionality
• how much does it need to be connected to Cargo, or even Rust?
  • could avoid every framework having its own CLI
  • Python standardised on Cookie Cutter for this
• could we have metabuild for post-build scripts?
  • could follow the policy stuff of cargo build such as using target directories
• motivation for post-build - is wasm - bindgen, opt, etc. post-process exe on Windows, RLS
  • sounds like the workflows proposal (for making project-specific Cargo commands)

[alexreg]

@nrc Was dynamically-generated directives for post-install action considered (as opposed to just static TOML metadata)? I can't quite tell from the above notes.