Alejandra 🔜 Rust Week 2026Mar 18

I'm mapping ALL crates.io and their dependencies.

These are just 14341 crates (palindrome number and about 5.9% of crates.io) and it already seems something of cosmical proportions. Like some sort of megastructure. And we have some data!

Out of 14341 crates, 46% depend directly on tokio, 4.8% depend directly on syn, only 44 depend on a rustc_* internal crate, almost all of them being rustc_version and even being the most downloaded crate of all crates.io, only 166 depend on `hashbrown`.

#rust #opensource #foss

Show threadMikalai
@blyxyas
Question.
Is it possible, in Rust, to just use type definitions without any code being used, like when type is used? Are there situations like it?
This question is induced by "import type" mechanics in TypeScript. But, does low-level language always have code to add?
Mar 22 at 6:03pmWeb
Show threadAlejandra 🔜 Rust Week 2026Mar 22

@mikalai I guess it's possible, but if only type definitions are used, everything will be ran at compiletime and thus no output will be user-visible.

I've seen someone run factorio just with Rust types, so everything is possible in the weird realm of type theory

Show threadMikalaiMar 22
@blyxyas
... beloved realm of types ... usage in practice