We are in the process of assembling the goal slate.
Summary
This is a draft for the eventual RFC proposing the 2025H1 goals.
Motivation
The 2025H1 goal slate consists of 41 project goals, of which we have selected 3 as flagship goals. Flagship goals represent the goals expected to have the broadest overall impact.
How the goal process works
Project goals are proposed bottom-up by a point of contact, somebody who is willing to commit resources (time, money, leadership) to seeing the work get done. The owner identifies the problem they want to address and sketches the solution of how they want to do so. They also identify the support they will need from the Rust teams (typically things like review bandwidth or feedback on RFCs). Teams then read the goals and provide feedback. If the goal is approved, teams are committing to support the owner in their work.
Project goals can vary in scope from an internal refactoring that affects only one team to a larger cross-cutting initiative. No matter its scope, accepting a goal should never be interpreted as a promise that the team will make any future decision (e.g., accepting an RFC that has yet to be written). Rather, it is a promise that the team are aligned on the contents of the goal thus far (including the design axioms and other notes) and will prioritize giving feedback and support as needed.
Of the proposed goals, a small subset are selected by the roadmap owner as flagship goals. Flagship goals are chosen for their high impact (many Rust users will be impacted) and their shovel-ready nature (the org is well-aligned around a concrete plan). Flagship goals are the ones that will feature most prominently in our public messaging and which should be prioritized by Rust teams where needed.
Rust’s mission
Our goals are selected to further Rust's mission of empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software. Rust targets programs that prioritize
- reliability and robustness;
- performance, memory usage, and resource consumption; and
- long-term maintenance and extensibility.
We consider "any two out of the three" as the right heuristic for projects where Rust is a strong contender or possibly the best option.
Axioms for selecting goals
We believe that...
- Rust must deliver on its promise of peak performance and high reliability. Rust’s maximum advantage is in applications that require peak performance or low-level systems capabilities. We must continue to innovate and support those areas above all.
- Rust's goals require high productivity and ergonomics. Being attentive to ergonomics broadens Rust impact by making it more appealing for projects that value reliability and maintenance but which don't have strict performance requirements.
- Slow and steady wins the race. For this first round of goals, we want a small set that can be completed without undue stress. As the Rust open source org continues to grow, the set of goals can grow in size.
Guide-level explanation
Flagship goals
The flagship goals proposed for this roadmap are as follows:
- Continue making Rust easier to use for network systems by bringing the Async Rust experience closer to parity with sync Rust. In 2025H1 we plan to:
- tell a complete story for the use of async fn in traits, unblocking wide ecosystem adoption;
- improve the ergonomics of
Pin, which is frequently used in low-level async code; and - prepare to support asynchronous (and synchronous) generators in the language.
- Continue helping Rust support low-level projects by stabilizing compiler options and tooling used by the Rust-for-Linux (RFL) project. In 2025H1 we plan to:
- implement RFC #3716 to allow stabilizing ABI-modifying compiler flags to control code generation, sanitizer integration, and so forth;
- taking the first step towards stabilizing
build-stdby creating a stable way to rebuild core with specific compiler options; - add rustdoc features to extract and customize rustdoc tests (
--extract-doctests); - stabilize clippy configuration like
.clippy.tomlandCLIPPY_CONF_DIR; - stabilize compiler flags to extract dependency info (e.g., as via
-Zbinary-dep-depinfo=y) and to configure no-std without requiring it in the source file (e.g., as via-Zcrate-attr);
- Address the biggest concerns raised by Rust maintainers, lack of face-to-face interaction, by organizing the Rust All-Hands 2025. In 2025H1 we plan to:
- convene Rust maintainers to celebrate Rust's tenth birthday at RustWeek 2025 (co-organized with RustNL;
- author a first draft for a Rust vision doc and gather feedback.
Why these particular flagship goals?
Async. Rust is a great fit for server development thanks to its ability to scale to very high load while retaining low memory usage and tight tail latency. 52% of the respondents in the 2023 Rust survey indicated that they use Rust to build server-side or backend applications. In 2025H1 our plan is to deliver (a) improved support for async-fn-in-traits, completely subsuming the functionality of the async-trait crate; (b) finalize a design for sync and async generators, simplifying the creation of iterators and async data streams; (c) and improve the ergonomics of Pin, making lower-level async coding more approachable. These items together start to unblock the creation of the next generation of async libraries in the wider ecosystem, as progress there has been blocked on a stable solution for async traits and streams.
Rust for Linux. The experimental support for Rust development in the Linux kernel is a watershed moment for Rust, demonstrating to the world that Rust is indeed a true alternative to C. Currently the Linux kernel support depends on a wide variety of unstable features in Rust; these same features block other embedded and low-level systems applications. We are working to stabilize all of these features so that RFL can be built on a stable toolchain. As we have successfully stabilized the majority of the language features used by RFL, we plan in 2025H1 to turn our focus to compiler flags and tooling options. We will (a) implement RFC #3716 which lays out a design for ABI-modifying flags; (b) take the first step towards stabilizing build-std by creating a stable way to rebuild core with specific compiler options; (c) extending rustdoc, clippy, and the compiler with features that extract metadata for integration into other build systems (in this case, the kernel's build system).
Rust All Hands 2025. May 15, 2025 marks the 10-year anniversary of Rust's 1.0 release; it also marks 10 years since the creation of the Rust subteams. At the time there were 6 Rust teams with 24 people in total. There are now 57 teams with 166 people. In-person All Hands meetings are an effective way to help these maintainers get to know one another with high-bandwidth discussions. This year, the Rust project will be coming together for RustWeek 2025, a joint event organized with RustNL. Participating project teams will use the time to share knowledge, make plans, or just get to know one another better. One particular goal for the All Hands is reviewing a draft of the Rust Vision Doc, a document that aims to take stock of where Rust is and lay out high-level goals for the next few years.
Project goals
The full slate of project goals are as follows. These goals all have identified owners who will drive the work forward as well as a viable work plan. The goals include asks from the listed Rust teams, which are cataloged in the reference-level explanation section below.
Invited goals. Some goals of the goals below are "invited goals", meaning that for that goal to happen we need someone to step up and serve as an owner. To find the invited goals, look for the 
Reference-level explanation
The following table highlights the asks from each affected team. The "owner" in the column is the person expecting to do the design/implementation work that the team will be approving.
bootstrap team
| Goal | Point of contact | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Discussion and moral support | ||
| ↳ Making compiletest more maintainable: reworking directive handling | Jieyou Xu | including consultations for desired test behaviors and testing infra consumers |
| RFC decision | ||
| ↳ Rust Specification Testing | Connor Horman | |
| Standard reviews | ||
| ↳ Making compiletest more maintainable: reworking directive handling | Jieyou Xu | Probably mostly bootstrap or whoever is more interested in reviewing [compiletest] changes |
cargo team
clippy team
| Goal | Point of contact | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Stabilization decision | ||
| ↳ Clippy configuration | Niko Matsakis | |
| Standard reviews | ||
| ↳ Optimizing Clippy & linting | Alejandra González |
compiler team
crates-io team
| Goal | Point of contact | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy to production | ||
| ↳ Quorum-based cryptographic infrastructure (RFC 3724) | @walterhpearce | |
| RFC decision | ||
| ↳ Quorum-based cryptographic infrastructure (RFC 3724) | @walterhpearce |
infra team
| Goal | Point of contact | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy to production | ||
| ↳ rustc-perf improvements | David Wood | rustc-perf improvements, testing infrastructure |
| ↳ Quorum-based cryptographic infrastructure (RFC 3724) | @walterhpearce | |
| Discussion and moral support | ||
| ↳ rustc-perf improvements | David Wood | |
| ↳ Metrics Initiative | Jane Lusby | |
| RFC decision | ||
| ↳ Quorum-based cryptographic infrastructure (RFC 3724) | @walterhpearce | |
| Standard reviews | ||
| ↳ rustc-perf improvements | David Wood |
lang team
leadership-council team
| Goal | Point of contact | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Allocate funds | ||
| ↳ Organize Rust All-Hands 2025 | Mara Bos |  for event |
| Miscellaneous | ||
| ↳ Organize Rust All-Hands 2025 | Mara Bos | Prepare one or two plenary sessions |
| ↳ Team swag | Mara Bos | Decide on team swag; suggestions very welcome! |
| ↳ Rust Vision Document | Niko Matsakis | Create supporting subteam + Zulip stream |
| ↳ Quorum-based cryptographic infrastructure (RFC 3724) | @walterhpearce | Select root quorum |
| Org decision | ||
| ↳ Run the 2025H1 project goal program | Niko Matsakis | approve creation of new team |
libs team
| Goal | Point of contact | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Discussion and moral support | ||
| ↳ Instrument the Rust standard library with safety contracts | Celina G. Val | |
| Standard reviews | ||
| ↳ Standard Library Contracts | Celina G. Val |
libs-api team
| Goal | Point of contact | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Design meeting | ||
| ↳ Trait for async iteration | Tyler Mandry | |
| ↳ Evaluate approaches for seamless interop between C++ and Rust | Tyler Mandry | 2-3 meetings expected; all involve lang |
| Discussion and moral support | ||
| ↳ Evaluate approaches for seamless interop between C++ and Rust | Tyler Mandry | |
| RFC decision | ||
| ↳ Trait for generators (sync) | Tyler Mandry |
opsem team
| Goal | Point of contact | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Design meeting | ||
| ↳ Null and enum-discriminant runtime checks in debug builds | Bastian Kersting | |
| Discussion and moral support | ||
| ↳ Null and enum-discriminant runtime checks in debug builds | Bastian Kersting | |
| Standard reviews | ||
| ↳ Null and enum-discriminant runtime checks in debug builds | Bastian Kersting | Ben Kimock |
project-stable-mir team
| Goal | Point of contact | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Standard reviews | ||
| ↳ Publish first version of StableMIR on crates.io | Celina G. Val |
release team
| Goal | Point of contact | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Discussion and moral support | ||
| ↳ Publish first rust-lang-owned release of "FLS" | Joel Marcey | |
| Standard reviews | ||
| ↳ Publish first rust-lang-owned release of "FLS" | Joel Marcey | For the tooling integration |
rustdoc team
| Goal | Point of contact | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Discussion and moral support | ||
↳ Continue resolving cargo-semver-checks blockers for merging into cargo | Predrag Gruevski | |
| ↳ Rust-for-Linux | Niko Matsakis | |
| ↳ Making compiletest more maintainable: reworking directive handling | Jieyou Xu | including consultations for desired test behaviors and testing infra consumers |
| RFC decision | ||
| ↳ Rustdoc features to extract doc tests | Niko Matsakis | |
| Stabilization decision | ||
| ↳ Rustdoc features to extract doc tests | Niko Matsakis | |
| Standard reviews | ||
| ↳ Rustdoc features to extract doc tests | Niko Matsakis |
spec team
| Goal | Point of contact | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Discussion and moral support | ||
| ↳ Publish first rust-lang-owned release of "FLS" | Joel Marcey | |
| RFC decision | ||
| ↳ Rust Specification Testing | Connor Horman |
testing-devex team
| Goal | Point of contact | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Discussion and moral support | ||
| ↳ Finish the libtest json output experiment | Ed Page |
types team
| Goal | Point of contact | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Discussion and moral support | ||
| ↳ Formalize const-traits in a-mir-formality | Oliver Scherer | During types team office hours, we'll share information about our progress. |
| ↳ "Stabilizable" prototype for expanded const generics | Boxy | |
| ↳ Model coherence in a-mir-formality | Niko Matsakis | |
| ↳ Next-generation trait solver | lcnr | |
| ↳ SVE and SME on AArch64 | David Wood | |
| ↳ Investigate SME support | David Wood | |
| FCP decision(s) | ||
| ↳ Next-generation trait solver | lcnr | for necessary refactorings |
| RFC decision | ||
| ↳ Implementable trait aliases | Tyler Mandry | |
| ↳ Land nightly experiment for SVE types | David Wood | |
| ↳ Extending type system to support scalable vectors | David Wood | |
| RFC secondary review | ||
| ↳ Prepare const traits for stabilization | Oliver Scherer | Types team needs to validate the approach |
| Standard reviews | ||
| ↳ Scalable Polonius support on nightly | Rémy Rakic | Matthew Jasper |
| ↳ Return type notation | Tyler Mandry | |
| ↳ Implementable trait aliases | Tyler Mandry | |
| ↳ Next-generation trait solver | lcnr |
wg-macros team
| Goal | Point of contact | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Discussion and moral support | ||
| ↳ Design for macro metavariable constructs | Josh Triplett | |
| Policy decision | ||
↳ Declarative (macro_rules!) macro improvements | Josh Triplett | Discussed with Eric Holk and Vincenzo Palazzo; lang would decide whether to delegate specific matters to wg-macros |
Definitions
Definitions for terms used above:
- Author RFC and Implementation means actually writing the code, document, whatever.
- Design meeting means holding a synchronous meeting to review a proposal and provide feedback (no decision expected).
- RFC decisions means reviewing an RFC and deciding whether to accept.
- Org decisions means reaching a decision on an organizational or policy matter.
- Secondary review of an RFC means that the team is "tangentially" involved in the RFC and should be expected to briefly review.
- Stabilizations means reviewing a stabilization and report and deciding whether to stabilize.
- Standard reviews refers to reviews for PRs against the repository; these PRs are not expected to be unduly large or complicated.
- Other kinds of decisions:
- Lang team experiments are used to add nightly features that do not yet have an RFC. They are limited to trusted contributors and are used to resolve design details such that an RFC can be written.
- Compiler Major Change Proposal (MCP) is used to propose a 'larger than average' change and get feedback from the compiler team.
- Library API Change Proposal (ACP) describes a change to the standard library.