Overall, developers using Rust are satisfied with Rust compilation performance, but slow builds and rebuilds in several common workflows limit the productivity for a significant fraction of Rust users, according to the Rust Compiler Performance Survey, which was conducted the past two months by the Rust compiler performance working group.
Results of the survey, which received more than 3,700 responses, were reported in a September 10 blog post. To gauge overall sentiment, participants were asked to rate their satisfaction with build performance on a scale of zero (worst) to 10 (best). The average rating was six, with most respondents rating their experience with seven out of 10. “While it is great to see some developers being happy with the state we have today, it is clear that many people are not so lucky, and Rust’s build performance limits their productivity,” said Jakub Beranek on behalf of the working group. “Around 45% of respondents who answered that they are no longer using Rust said that at least one of the reasons why they stopped were long compile times.”
The survey found that the Rust build experience “differs wildly across users and workflows” and is not as clear-cut as “Rust builds are slow,” Beranek said. “We actually received many positive comments about users being happy with Rust build performance, and appreciation for it being improved vastly over the past several years to the point where it stopped being a problem.” But some survey respondents said the build performance of Rust was inferior to languages such as Go or Zig.
