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are features never documented (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago by pileghoff@programming.dev to c/rust@programming.dev
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I have a written a bit of rust by now, but one problem I always seem to encounter it that the features a create supports never seem to be documented. Neither what features are available, what they each do or which are default. Is that really the case, or am I missing something?

I constantly seem to include something from the docs, only to be told by the compiler that it does not exist, and then I have to open the source for the create to figure out if it's hidden behind a feature flag.

Also, is it really true that I can't disable a single feature from the default set, without having to copy the default list and manually removing it?

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[-] pileghoff@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

Is that always suppose to be shown? My counter example (the one that prompted this thread) is embassy_executor::Executor. When looking in the docs i dont see anywhere that its locked behind a feature flag, you have to look in the source

[-] RunAwayFrog@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

So, this is being worked on. But for now, that crate needs this line in lib.rs

#![cfg_attr(docsrs, feature(doc_auto_cfg))]

And this line in Cargo.toml's [package.metadata.docs.rs] section:

rustdoc-args = ["--cfg", "docsrs"]

With these changes, feature gating will be displayed in the docs.

To replicate this locally:

RUSTDOCFLAGS='--cfg docsrs' cargo doc --features=nightly,defmt,pender-callback,arch-cortex-m,executor-thread,executor-interrupt
[-] pileghoff@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

Sadly, this does not seem to be the norm in my experience. I have not attemped to adding this myself, but I wanted to ask: are there any hurdles or other good reasons to not just adding this to every create? Why isn't it the default?

[-] RunAwayFrog@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

are there any hurdles or other good reasons to not just adding this to every create?

I'm no expert. But my guess would be that many crate authors may simply not be aware of this feature. It wasn't always there, and it's still unstable. You would have to reach the "Unstable features" page of the rustdoc book to know about it.

Or maybe some know about it, but don't want to use an unstable feature, or are just waiting for it to possibly automatically work without any modifications.

Of course, I would assume none of this applies to the embassy devs. That Cargo.toml file has a flavors field, which is something I've never seen before ๐Ÿ˜‰ So, I'm assuming they are way more knowledgable (and up-to-date) about the Rust ecosystem than me.

[-] snaggen@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

Didn't know about this, looking forward for this to be stabilized. But a comment on your command, it is easier to use --all-features instead of listing them all.

[-] RunAwayFrog@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

--all-features doesn't work with that particular crate because two of the features conflict with each other. The features list in my command is the one used for docs.rs from the crate's Cargo.toml.

this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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