RFC #3764 has been accepted, establishing 39 total Rust project goals for 2025H1.

Summary

Propose a slate of 39 project goals for 2025H1, including 3 flagship goals:

• 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 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-std by 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.toml and CLIPPY_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.

Motivation

The 2025H1 goal slate consists of 39 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 point of contact 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 point of contact 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. We don't want to create stress via unrealistic, ambitious goals. We want to make steady progress each goal period on important problems.

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-std by 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.toml and CLIPPY_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) progress towards 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 badge in the table below. Invited goals have reserved capacity for teams and a mentor, so if you are someone looking to help Rust progress, they are a great way to get involved.

Goal	Point of contact	Team
"Stabilizable" prototype for expanded const generics	Boxy	lang, types
Bring the Async Rust experience closer to parity with sync Rust	Tyler Mandry	compiler, lang, libs-api, spec, types
Continue resolving cargo-semver-checks blockers for merging into cargo	Predrag Gruevski	cargo, rustdoc
Declarative (macro_rules!) macro improvements	Josh Triplett	lang, wg-macros
Evaluate approaches for seamless interop between C++ and Rust	Tyler Mandry	compiler, lang, libs-api
Experiment with ergonomic ref-counting	Santiago Pastorino	lang
Expose experimental LLVM features for GPU offloading	Manuel Drehwald	compiler, lang
Extend pubgrub to match cargo's dependency resolution	Jacob Finkelman	cargo
Externally Implementable Items	Mara Bos	compiler, lang
Finish the libtest json output experiment	Ed Page	cargo, libs-api, testing-devex
Implement Open API Namespace Support		cargo, compiler
Implement restrictions, prepare for stabilization	Jacob Pratt	compiler, lang, spec
Improve state machine codegen	Folkert de Vries	compiler, lang
Instrument the Rust standard library with safety contracts	Celina G. Val	compiler, libs
Making compiletest more maintainable: reworking directive handling	Jieyou Xu	bootstrap, compiler, rustdoc
Metrics Initiative	Jane Lusby	compiler, infra
Model coherence in a-mir-formality	Niko Matsakis	types
Next-generation trait solver	lcnr	types
Nightly support for ergonomic SIMD multiversioning	Luca Versari	lang
Null and enum-discriminant runtime checks in debug builds	Bastian Kersting	compiler, lang, opsem
Optimizing Clippy & linting	Alejandra González	clippy
Organize Rust All-Hands 2025	Mara Bos	leadership-council
Prepare const traits for stabilization	Oliver Scherer	compiler, lang, types
Promoting Parallel Front End	Sparrow Li	compiler
Prototype a new set of Cargo "plumbing" commands		cargo
Publish first rust-lang-owned release of "FLS"	Joel Marcey	bootstrap, spec
Publish first version of StableMIR on crates.io	Celina G. Val	compiler, project-stable-mir
Research: How to achieve safety when linking separately compiled code	Mara Bos	compiler, lang
Run the 2025H1 project goal program	Niko Matsakis	leadership-council
Rust Vision Document	Niko Matsakis	leadership-council
SVE and SME on AArch64	David Wood	compiler, lang, types
Scalable Polonius support on nightly	Rémy Rakic	types
Secure quorum-based cryptographic verification and mirroring for crates.io	walterhpearce	cargo, crates-io, infra, leadership-council, release
Stabilize public/private dependencies		cargo, compiler
Stabilize tooling needed by Rust for Linux	Niko Matsakis	cargo, clippy, compiler, rustdoc
Unsafe Fields	Jack Wrenn	compiler, lang
Use annotate-snippets for rustc diagnostic output	Scott Schafer	compiler
build-std	David Wood	cargo
rustc-perf improvements	David Wood	compiler, infra

Reference-level explanation

The following table highlights the asks from each affected team. The rows are goals and columns are asks being made of the team. The contents of each cell may contain extra notes (or sometimes footnotes) with more details. Teams often use these notes to indicate the person on the team signed up to do the work, for example.

bootstrap team

*1: For any tooling integration (from here)

*2: including consultations for desired test behaviors and testing infra consumers (from here)

*3: Probably mostly bootstrap or whoever is more interested in reviewing [compiletest] changes (from here)

cargo team

*1: 1 hour Overall Design and threat model (from here)

*2: 1 hour General design/implementation for index verification (from here)

*3: 1 hour Design for novel incremental download mechanism for bandwidth conservation (from here)

clippy team

compiler team

*1: Esteban Kuber will be the reviewer (from here)

*2: RFC #3716, currently in PFCP (from here)

*3: For each of the relevant compiler flags (from here)

*4: 2-3 meetings expected; all involve lang (from here)

*5: Update performance regression policy (from here)

*6: including consultations for desired test behaviors and testing infra consumers (from here)

*7: Probably mostly bootstrap or whoever is more interested in reviewing [compiletest] changes (from here)

crates-io team

*1: 1 hour Overall Design, threat model, and discussion of key management and quorums (from here)

*2: 1 hour General design/implementation for automated index signing (from here)

infra team

*1: 3 hours of design and threat model discussion. Specific production infrastructure setup will come at a later time after the initial proof of concept. (from here)

*2: rustc-perf improvements, testing infrastructure (from here)

lang team

Goal	Good vibes	Champion	Experiment	Design mtg.	RFC	Stabilize.	Policy
"Stabilizable" prototype for expanded const generics	✅
Async
↳ Implementable trait aliases		Tyler Mandry			✅
↳ Pin ergonomics		Tyler Mandry
↳ Return type notation		Niko Matsakis				✅
↳ Trait for generators (sync)		Tyler Mandry		2 meetings expected	✅
↳ Unsafe binders		*4			Stretch goal
↳ async fn in dyn Trait		Niko Matsakis
Declarative (macro_rules!) macro improvements							*2
↳ Design and iteration for macro fragment fields		Josh Triplett		✅	✅
↳ Design for macro metavariable constructs	✅
↳ macro_rules! attributes		Josh Triplett			✅
↳ macro_rules! derives		Josh Triplett			✅
Evaluate approaches for seamless interop between C++ and Rust	✅	Tyler Mandry		*3
Experiment with ergonomic ref-counting		Niko Matsakis
Expose experimental LLVM features for GPU offloading		TC
Externally Implementable Items		Niko Matsakis
Implement restrictions, prepare for stabilization	✅					✅
Improve state machine codegen		TC	✅
Nightly support for ergonomic SIMD multiversioning			✅	✅	✅
Null and enum-discriminant runtime checks in debug builds	✅
Prepare const traits for stabilization		Niko Matsakis		*1	(stretch goal)
Research: How to achieve safety when linking separately compiled code	✅	Niko Matsakis	Niko Matsakis
SVE and SME on AArch64	✅
↳ Extending type system to support scalable vectors		David Wood			✅
↳ Investigate SME support	✅
Unsafe Fields	✅	Scott McMurray		✅	✅

*1: first meeting scheduled for Jan; second meeting may be required (from here)

*2: Discussed with Eric Holk and Vincenzo Palazzo; lang would decide whether to delegate specific matters to wg-macros (from here)

*3: 2-3 meetings expected; all involve lang (from here)

*4: Niko Matsakis (stretch) (from here)

leadership-council team

*1: for event (from here)

*2: Prepare one or two plenary sessions (from here)

*3: Decide on team swag; suggestions very welcome! (from here)

*4: Create supporting subteam + Zulip stream (from here)

*5: 1 hour synchronously discussing the threat models, policy, and quorum mechanism. Note: The ask from the Leadership Council is not a detailed exploration of how we address these threat models; rather, this will be a presentation of the threat models and a policy decision that the project cares about those threat models, along with the specific explanation of why a quorum is desirable to address those threat models. (from here)

*6: approve creation of new team (from here)

libs team

libs-api team

*1: 2-3 meetings expected; all involve lang (from here)

opsem team

project-stable-mir team

release team

*1: Asynchronous discussion of the release team's role in the chain of trust, and preliminary approval of an experimental proof of concept. Approximately ~1 hour of total time across the 6-month period. (from here)

rustdoc team

*1: including consultations for desired test behaviors and testing infra consumers (from here)

spec team

testing-devex team

types team

*1: Types team needs to validate the approach (from here)

*2: During types team office hours, we'll share information about our progress. (from here)

*3: for necessary refactorings (from here)

wg-macros team

*1: Discussed with Eric Holk and Vincenzo Palazzo; lang would decide whether to delegate specific matters to wg-macros (from here)

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.

Frequently asked questions

What goals were not accepted?

The following goals were proposed but ultimately not accepted, either for want of resources or consensus. In some cases narrower versions of these goals were prepared.

What do the column names like "Ded. r?" mean?

Those column names refer to specific things that can be asked of teams: