cargo fails to parse generated manifest at publish time when there are conditional features activated on an ignored dev-dependency

[lovasoa]

Problem

In cargo, it is possible to conditionally activate a feature on a dependency based on the main crate features, using the crate/feature syntax:

[features]
# Enables parallel processing support by enabling the "rayon" feature of jpeg-decoder.
parallel = ["jpeg-decoder/rayon"]

This works if jpeg-decoder is in the main [dependencies] section of Cargo.toml. However, if jpeg-decoder is in the [dev-dependencies] section, and it is not included at publish time (because path dev-dependencies are ignored, for instance), then it fails with the following error:

error: failed to verify package tarball

Caused by:
  failed to parse manifest at `.../Cargo.toml`

Caused by:
  feature `parallel` includes `jpeg-decoder/rayon`, but `jpeg-decoder` is not a dependency

It looks like cargo auto-generated a faulty Cargo.toml by removing the path dev dependency in the dev-dependencies section, but not removing it from the features section.

Steps

No response

Possible Solution(s)

No response

Notes

No response

Version

cargo 1.73.0 (9c4383fb5 2023-08-26)
release: 1.73.0
commit-hash: 9c4383fb55986096b414d98125421ab87b5fd642
commit-date: 2023-08-26
host: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
libgit2: 1.6.4 (sys:0.17.2 vendored)
libcurl: 8.2.1-DEV (sys:0.4.65+curl-8.2.1 vendored ssl:OpenSSL/1.1.1u)
ssl: OpenSSL 1.1.1u  30 May 2023
os: Ubuntu 22.04 (jammy) [64-bit]

[epage]

We need to update prepare_for_publish to strip these feature activations when stripping dependencies.

[weihanglo]

Seems like a duplicate of #12225? There is an open PR but gets stale.

[epage]

Closing in favor of #12225. If there is a mistake and we should keep this open, let us know!

[lovasoa]

Yes, this was indeed a duplicate. Sorry.