2018 roadmap

_posts/2018-03-12-roadmap.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Rust's 2018 roadmap"
+author: "The Rust Core Team"
+---
+
+Each year the Rust community [comes together][roadmap-process] to set out a
+roadmap. This year, in addition to the [survey], we put out
+a [call for blog posts][blog-2018] in December, which resulted
+in [100 blog posts][read-rust] written over the span of a few weeks. The end
+result is the recently-merged [2018 roadmap RFC][rfc].
+
+[roadmap-process]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/1728
+[survey]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2017/09/05/Rust-2017-Survey-Results.html
+[blog-2018]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2018/01/03/new-years-rust-a-call-for-community-blogposts.html
+[read-rust]: https://readrust.net/rust-2018/
+[rfc]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/2314
+
+## Rust: 2018 edition
+
+**This year, we will deliver _Rust 2018_, marking the first major new edition of
+Rust since 1.0** (aka Rust 2015).
+
+We will continue to publish releases every six weeks as usual. But we will
+designate a release in the latter third of the year (Rust 1.29 - 1.31) as *Rust
+2018*. This new "edition" of Rust will be the culmination of feature
+stabilization throughout the year, and will ship with polished documentation,
+tooling, and libraries that tie in to those features.
+
+The idea of editions is to signify major steps in Rust’s evolution, where a
+collection of new features or idioms, taken as a whole, changes the experience
+of using Rust. They’re a chance, every few years, to take stock of the work
+we’ve delivered in six-week increments. To tell a bigger story about where Rust
+is going. And to ship the whole stack as a polished product.
+
+We expect that each edition will have a core theme or focus. Thinking of 1.0 as
+"Rust 2015", we have:
+
+-   Rust 2015: [stability](https://blog.rust-lang.org/2014/09/15/Rust-1.0.html)
+-   Rust 2018: productivity
+
+## What will be in Rust 2018?
+
+The roadmap doesn’t say _for certain_ what will ship in Rust 2018, but we have a
+pretty good idea, and we’ll cover the major suspects below.
+
+### Documentation improvements
+
+Part of the goal with the Rust 2018 release is to provide high quality
+documentation for the full set of new and improved features and the idioms they
+give rise to. [The Rust Programming Language book][trpl] has been completely
+re-written over the last 18 months, and will be updated throughout the year as
+features reach the stable compiler. [Rust By Example] will likewise undergo a
+revamp this year. And there are numerous third party books, like [Programming
+Rust], reaching print as well.
+
+[trpl]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/book/second-edition/
+[Programming Rust]: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920040385.do
+[Rust By Example]: https://rustbyexample.com/
+
+### Language improvements
+
+The most prominent language work in the pipeline stems from [2017’s ergonomics
+initiative]. Almost all of the accepted RFCs from the initiative are available
+on nightly today, and will be polished and stabilized over the next several
+months. Among these productivity improvements are a few “headliners” that will
+form the backbone of the release:
+
+[2017’s ergonomics initiative]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2017/03/02/lang-ergonomics.html
+
+- **Ownership system improvements**, including making borrowing more flexible
+  via “non-lexical lifetimes”, improved pattern matching integration, and more.
+- **Trait system improvements**, including the long-awaited `impl Trait` syntax
+  for dealing with types abstractly.
+- **Module system improvements**, focused on increasingly clarity and reducing
+  complexity.
+- **Generators/async/await:** work is rapidly progressing on first-class async
+  programming support.
+
+In addition, we anticipate a few more major features to stabilize prior to the
+Rust 2018 release, including **SIMD**, **custom allocators**, and **macros 2.0**.
+
+### Compiler improvements
+
+As of [Rust 1.24](https://blog.rust-lang.org/2018/02/15/Rust-1.24.html),
+incremental recompilation is available and enabled by default on the stable
+compiler. This feature already makes rebuilds significantly faster than fresh
+builds, but over the course of the year we expect continued improvements for
+_both_ fresh and re-builds. Compiler performance should not be an obstacle to
+productivity in Rust 2018.
+
+### Tooling improvements
+
+Rust 2018 will see high quality 1.0 releases of the [Rust Language Server] ("RLS",
+which underlies much of our IDE integration story) and [`rustfmt`] (a standard
+formatting tool for Rust code). We will continue to improve Cargo by stabilizing
+custom registries, public dependencies, and a revised profile system. We’re also
+expecting further work on [Cargo build system integration], [Xargo integration],
+and [custom test frameworks], though it’s unclear as yet how many of these will
+be complete prior to Rust 2018.
+
+[Rust Language Server]: https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/rls
+[Cargo build system integration]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/2136
+[Xargo integration]: https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/4959
+[custom test frameworks]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/2318
+[`rustfmt`]: https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/rustfmt
+
+### Library improvements
+
+Building on [our work from last year][blitz], we will publish a 1.0 version of
+the [Rust API guidelines book], continue pushing important libraries to 1.0
+status, improve discoverability through a revamped cookbook effort, and make
+heavy investments in libraries in specific domains—as we’ll see below.
+
+[blitz]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2017/05/05/libz-blitz.html
+[Rust API guidelines book]: https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/api-guidelines
+
+### Web site improvements
+
+As part of Rust 2018, we will completely overhaul the Rust web site, making it
+useful for CTOs and engineers alike. It should be far easier to find information
+to help evaluate Rust for your use case, and to stay up to date with the latest
+tooling and ecosystem improvements.
+
+### Four target domains
+
+Part of our goal with Rust 2018 is to demonstrate Rust’s productivity in
+specific domains of use. We’ve selected four such domains to invest in and
+highlight this year:
+
+- **Network services**. Rust’s reliability and low footprint make it an
+  excellent match for network services and infrastructure, especially at high
+  scale.
+- **[Command-line apps]** (CLI). Rust’s portability, reliability, ergonomics, and ability to
+  produce static binaries come together to great effect for writing CLI apps.
+- **[WebAssembly]**. The “wasm” web standard allows shipping native-like binaries
+  to all major browsers, but GC support is still years away. Rust
+  is [extremely well positioned](https://mgattozzi.com/rust-wasm) to target this
+  domain, and provides a reasonable on-ramp for programmers coming from JS.
+- **[Embedded devices]**. Rust has the potential to make programming
+  resource-constrained devices much more productive—and fun! We want embedded
+  programming to reach first-class status this year.
+
+[Command-line apps]: https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/announcing-the-cli-working-group/6872
+[Embedded devices]: https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/announcing-the-embedded-devices-working-group/6839
+[WebAssembly]: https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/come-join-the-rust-and-webassembly-working-group/6845
+
+Each of these domains has a dedicated working group for the year. These WGs will
+work in a cross-cutting fashion, interfacing with language, tooling, library,
+and documentation work.
+
+### Compatibility across editions
+
+**TL;DR: Rust will continue its stability guarantee
+of [hassle-free updates to new versions][stability]**.
+
+[stability]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2014/10/30/Stability.html
+
+Editions will have a meaning for the compiler. You will be able to write:
+
+```toml
+edition = "2018"
+```
+
+in your Cargo.toml to _opt in_ to the new edition for your crate. Doing so may
+introduce new keywords or otherwise require adjustments to code. However:
+
+-   You can use _old_ editions indefinitely on _new_ compilers; **editions are
+    opt-in**.
+-   Editions are set on a _per-crate_ basis and can be mixed and matched; **you
+    can be on a different edition from your dependencies**.
+-   Warning-free code in one edition must compile, and have the same behavior, on
+    the next.
+-   Edition-related warnings, e.g. that an identifier will become a keyword in the
+    next edition, must be easily fixable via an automated migration tool
+    (rustfix). **Only a small minority of crates should require _any_
+    manual work to opt in to a new edition**, and that manual work must be
+    minimal.
+
+In other words, the progression of new compiler versions is independent from
+editions; you can migrate at your leisure, and don’t have to worry about ecosystem
+compatibility; and edition migration is normally trivial.
+
+## Additional 2018 goals
+
+While the Rust 2018 release is our major focus this year, there are some
+additional ongoing concerns that we want to give attention to.
+
+### Better serving intermediate Rustaceans
+
+One of the strongest messages we’ve heard from production users, and [the 2017
+survey], is that people need more resources to take them from understanding
+Rust’s concepts to knowing how to use them _effectively_. The roadmap does not
+stipulate exactly what these resources should look like
+— [probably there should be several kinds][intermediate] — but commits us as a
+community to putting significant work into this space, and ending the year with
+some solid new material.
+
+[the 2017 survey]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2017/09/05/Rust-2017-Survey-Results.html
+[intermediate]: https://quietmisdreavus.net/code/2018/01/10/not-a-layer-cake-analogy/
+
+### Community
+
+**Connect and empower Rust's global community**. We will pursue
+internationalization as a first-class concern, and proactively work to build
+ties between Rust subcommunities currently separated by language, geography, or
+culture. We will spin up and support Rust events worldwide, including further
+growth of the RustBridge program.
+
+**Grow Rust's teams and new leaders within them**. We will refactor the Rust
+team structure to support more scale, agility, and leadership growth. We will
+systematically invest in mentoring, both by creating more on-ramp resources and
+through direct mentorship relationships.
+
+## A call to action
+
+As always in the Rust world, the goals laid out here will ultimately be the
+result of a community-wide effort—maybe one including you! Here are some of the
+teams where we could use the most help. Note that all IRC channels refer to the
+irc.mozilla.org network.
+
+- **WebAssembly WG**. Compiling Rust to WebAssembly should be _the_ best choice for fast code on the Web. Check out [rust-lang-nursery/rust-wasm](https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/rust-wasm) to learn more and get involved!
+- **CLI WG**. Writing CLI apps in Rust should be a frictionless experience--from finding the right libraries and writing concise integration tests up to cross-platform distribution. Join us at [rust-lang-nursery/cli-wg](https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/cli-wg) and help us reach that goal!
+- **Embedded Devices WG**. Quality, productivity, accessibility: Rust can change the embedded industry for the better. Let's get this process started in 2018! Join us at [https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/embedded-wg](https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/embedded-wg)
+- **Ecosystem WG**: We'll be providing guidance and support to important crates throughout the ecosystem. Drop into the [WG-ecosystem room](https://gitter.im/rust-lang/WG-ecosystem) and we'll guide you to places that need help!
+- **Dev Tools Team**. There are always interesting things to tackle with developer tools  (IDEs, Cargo, rustdoc, Clippy, Rustfmt, custom test frameworks, and more). Drop in to #rust-dev-tools and have a chat with the team!
+- **Rustdoc Team**. With your help, we can make documentation better for everyone. Come join us in #rustdoc on IRC, and we can help you get started!
+- **Release team**. Drop by #rust-release on IRC to get involved with regression triage and release production!