Rust: policy on minimum support Rust compiler version

[rw]

Should we make a commitment to support past versions of Rust compilers?

I think using a policy like clap's, where we support the last two stable releases, makes sense for us. Releases happen every 6 weeks, so we would promise to support compilers up to 12 weeks old. That's one quarter of a year.

If we instead insist on using the very latest stable compiler features, it might be hard for users to keep up with our library.

(I realized that this is an issue when @CasperN 's build failed, because they are using features from a more recent Rust compiler version.)

cc @gwvo @aardappel @TethysSvensson @vglavnyy @jean-airoldie @maxburke @tymcauley
cc @ry for opinions

[aardappel]

Since I am not in the eco-system, I find it hard to say how many releases is a reasonable window. I'm still dealing with pre-C++11 users, so 12 weeks? I am so jealous :)

I'd think people using FlatBuffers in Rust are likely to be a bit more accepting of being on the cutting edge than average? :)

[maxburke]

I'm totally fine with that. We're mostly on nightly for Other Reasons(tm), but supporting to (stable - 1) would be great.

[github-actions]

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