To me, the two major problems are:
- no namespaces
Someone uploads “serde2”? that’s blocked forever. Someone uploads a typo version of a popular package? Too bad for you, learn how to type.
- the github connection
If you want to contribute to crates.io you’re bound to github. No gitlab, codeberg, gitee, sourcehut, etc.
Not sure if there are any other problems, but those two seem like the biggest things and #1 is AFAIK not something they ever want to change + it would be difficult to as one would need a migration strategy.
Eh, they could change #1 if they allow current non-namespaced packages but don’t allow new ones. That’s a pretty lazy migration strategy, but they could take it a step further and allow aliases (e.g. serde can be namespace/serde, and that’s set on the serde package).
But the bigger issue is that the devs don’t want to support namespaces.
#2 is the stronger argument imo. A package manager should not rely on a single external source.
