While I don’t want to deny the problems of not having namespaces, they will introduce a new set of problems. One issue with Github and similar platforms with namespaces is that a search for a repo turns up multiple projects with the same name under different namespaces. It’s always a confusion as to which one is canonical. Another problem is that people are now going to name squat namespaces instead of project names. Imagine somebody registers the serde namespace. Their crates may be mistaken as the canonical one.

Apparently there’s an effort underway. I don’t have any more context than this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38020117

I will say that I actually like the flat namespace, but don’t have a strong opinion

If Github isn’t used for source control, why on earth is it the only auth provider?

Why has crates.io given Microsoft the ability to control who can and cannot publish Rust code?

Namespacing is whatever, but IMO the real issue is the disproportionate and unnecessary amount of power given to a company known for pushing monopolies.

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.

Isn’t github used only as the auth provider? It is not using any git features, just leaning on the security guarantees of github. I don’t find this too alarming.

If you want, you can use git links when declaring dependencies in Cargo.toml. So alternative to crates.io is basically any git host already!