How many web apps can you name that don’t rely on any external gems? Packaging that mess is a pain in every scripting language.

How far do you make it writing a web app in rust or go without pulling in external packages, then? Or a front-end using only javascript and html?

In Rust, it’s pretty quick. You could write a server yourself, but it would take a lot of work. It’s trivial with a package though.

Steve, what is Rust's equivalent to Go's cross-compilation-- plain old cargo build?

$ cargo build --target=TARGET

a list of default targets-- $ rustc --print target-list aarch64-linux-android aarch64-unknown-cloudabi aarch64-unknown-freebsd aarch64-unknown-fuchsia aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu aarch64-unknown-linux-musl arm-linux-androideabi arm-unknown-linux-gnueabi arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf arm-unknown-linux-musleabi arm-unknown-linux-musleabihf armv4t-unknown-linux-gnueabi armv5te-unknown-linux-gnueabi armv7-linux-androideabi armv7-unknown-cloudabi-eabihf armv7-unknown-linux-gnueabihf armv7-unknown-linux-musleabihf asmjs-unknown-emscripten i586-pc-windows-msvc i586-unknown-linux-gnu i586-unknown-linux-musl i686-apple-darwin i686-linux-android i686-pc-windows-gnu i686-pc-windows-msvc i686-unknown-cloudabi i686-unknown-dragonfly i686-unknown-freebsd i686-unknown-haiku i686-unknown-linux-gnu i686-unknown-linux-musl i686-unknown-netbsd i686-unknown-openbsd mips-unknown-linux-gnu mips-unknown-linux-musl mips-unknown-linux-uclibc mips64-unknown-linux-gnuabi64 mips64el-unknown-linux-gnuabi64 mipsel-unknown-linux-gnu mipsel-unknown-linux-musl mipsel-unknown-linux-uclibc msp430-none-elf powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu powerpc-unknown-linux-gnuspe powerpc-unknown-netbsd powerpc64-unknown-linux-gnu powerpc64le-unknown-linux-gnu s390x-unknown-linux-gnu sparc-unknown-linux-gnu sparc64-unknown-linux-gnu sparc64-unknown-netbsd sparcv9-sun-solaris thumbv6m-none-eabi thumbv7em-none-eabi thumbv7em-none-eabihf thumbv7m-none-eabi wasm32-experimental-emscripten wasm32-unknown-emscripten wasm32-unknown-unknown x86_64-apple-darwin x86_64-linux-android x86_64-pc-windows-gnu x86_64-pc-windows-msvc x86_64-rumprun-netbsd x86_64-sun-solaris x86_64-unknown-bitrig x86_64-unknown-cloudabi x86_64-unknown-dragonfly x86_64-unknown-freebsd x86_64-unknown-fuchsia x86_64-unknown-haiku x86_64-unknown-l4re-uclibc x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu x86_64-unknown-linux-gnux32 x86_64-unknown-linux-musl x86_64-unknown-netbsd x86_64-unknown-openbsd x86_64-unknown-redox

Thank you

Note that you also may want to use xargo or cargo-xbuild to build other custom targets, and rustup to fetch the stdlib for the targets listed above.

Aren't there also linker issues with cross-building for some targets like i686-pc-windows-msvc? At least, I don't think I ever got it to work properly but I don't recall what the exact problem was.

Some platforms are harder than others, it’s true. And if you link to any C code, you have to deal with that as well. As an example, I just saw this: http://zork.net/~st/jottings/rust-windows-and-debian.html

We’ll get there!

I never use server-side external packages when writing web apps (well, except the bcrypt crypto package, which is an official package but not technically part of the stdlib yet).

Dependencies are evil.

Anything that runs on JRuby can be packaged as a single file.

And even with MRI, it's not as painful as people make out. Set `$GEM_HOME`, `bundle install`, tar up your app and the gems, stick them on the server.