Using pre-2015 Rust

1

To research for a (Pre-)RFC, I want to use Rust 0.11.0 to see what it's like before RFC 241 deref-conversions. The problem is that Rust 0.11.0 is not available via rustup and doesn't support Windows 10 that I'm using, and I don't have easy access to a Windows 7/8 computer (I have a Linux VM, but compatibility is probably another can of worms).

I can't find a Rust playground that supports pre-2015 Rust.

Any ideas?

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2

I hope someone else has a more convenient answer for you, but you could start with:

git clone --single-branch --branch 1.11.0 https://github.com/rust-lang/rust.git
cd rust
./configure
make
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3

That is 1.11, not 0.11. And in any case that won't help for building it yourself. One version of rustc uses an older version of rustc as bootstrap compiler. If the version you want doesn't support your newer OS version, then an older rustc version won't support said OS version either.

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4

Did you actually try? Windows 10 wasn't released yet when 0.11 was released, so of course it doesn't explicitly list compatibility. Windows 10 should support most older executables just fine though.

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5

But, if Rust has always maintained backwards compatibility, shouldn't a newer rustc always be able to "bootstrap" an older one?

Edit: no, because the compiler will have used unstable features that have since changed/been removed.

6

Tried it, it could not integrate with cargo well. I had to write a wrapper to translate -vV into --version verbose, and then cargo run had this error:

error: malformed output when learning about crate-type bin information
command was: `D:\study-coding\rust\use-pre-2015-rust\.\rustc_wrapper.cmd - --crate-name ___ --print=file-names --crate-type bin --crate-type rlib --crate-type dylib --crate-type cdylib --crate-type staticlib --crate-type proc-macro --print=sysroot --print=split-debuginfo --print=crate-name --print=cfg -Wwarnings`

--- stderr
error: Unrecognized option: 'print'.

So I tried running rustc directly rustc src/main.rs but it seems it only had the i686-pc-mingw32 target which linker I don't have:

D:\study-coding\rust\use-pre-2015-rust>rustc src/main.rs
error: could not exec the linker `gcc`: file not found (OS Error 2: 系统找不到指定的文件。
)
error: aborting due to previous error

:frowning: I'll do it another day, I'll have to use the Linux VM, install MinGW, or find a msvc target toolchain.

7

You will need a cargo version no newer than the rustc you are trying to use. Newer cargo versions use more and more rustc features that didn't exist yet in 1.0.

8

I believe msvc targets were added around 1.10. I'm pretty sure there wasn't anything pre-1.0

9

Also, Rust did not maintain backward compatibility with versions below 1.0.

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