Looking for contributors

The goals below are looking for a contributor to do the implementation work. The goal summaries include details of the expected time commitment and work duration. If you might be interested in helping with a goal, please join the rust-lang Zulip and post a message in the #project-goals/2026-workshop channel: tell us a bit about yourself, and mention us (the goals team) in that message, like Hello @T-goals!. You could also write to the goals team at goals-team@rust-lang.org! We would love to help you learn more about it.

Field Projections

Benno Lossin (point of contact), Ding Xiang Fei, Niko Matsakis, Oli Scherer, Tyler Mandry, Ding Xiang Fei (compiler champion), Tyler Mandry (lang champion), Mario Carneiro (opsem champion), Niko Matsakis (types champion)

We aim to explore and refine the virtual places approach for field projections, document its design and interactions in the beyond-refs wiki, implement it as an experiment in the compiler, and prepare RFCs based on the findings.

This is a continuing goal, see the goal document of the previous period for historical information.

Finish the libtest json output experiment

Ed Page (point of contact)

Finish the libtest json experiment.

Implement Open Rust Namespace Support

Ed Page (point of contact)

Navigate the cross-team design work to get RFC #3243 implemented.

Needs contributor: This goal needs contributors to help complete the implementations in Cargo, rustc, and crates.io. The work spans multiple repositories and involves cross-team coordination.

Prepare TAIT + RTN for stabilization

TC (point of contact), Niko Matsakis, TC (lang champion), lcnr (types champion)

Prepare TAIT (type alias impl trait) and return type notation (RTN) for stabilization together, giving Rust a coherent story for naming and bounding previously unnameable and unboundable types. TAIT lets users name opaque types like closures, async blocks, and complex iterators without boxing. RTN enables bounds like T::method(..): Send, solving the “Send bound” problem and unblocking widespread use of async fn in traits. This goal also extends RTN to async closures via a new RFC. Full stabilization is blocked on the next-gen trait solver work and is intended to happen late this year.

Needs contributor: The majority of the impl work for TAIT and RTN has been done however the syntactic design for RTN and async closures is incomplete. We’re seeking someone willing to help work on the RFC and explore the design space as well as to finalize impl details.

Prototype a new set of Cargo “plumbing” commands

Ed Page (point of contact)

1. Refactor Cargo to allow hacks in proposed cargo-plumbing commands to be removed (crate-ci/cargo-plumbing#82).
2. Round out proposed commands (issues)
3. Finalize the message formats (cargo-plumbing#18)

Needs contributor: This goal needs contributors to refactor Cargo internals, implement remaining plumbing commands, optimize performance, and iterate on output schemas. The work is primarily in rust-lang/cargo and crate-ci/cargo-plumbing.

Reborrow traits

Aapo Alasuutari (point of contact), Tyler Mandry (lang champion), Oli Scherer (types champion)

Bring the Reborrow and CoerceShared trait to nightly Rust, enabling iteration based on user feedback. Begin work on nontrivial cases where more than one lifetime is being reborrowed or coerced into shared

Stabilize Cargo SBOM precursor

Sergey Davidoff (point of contact), Weihang Lo (cargo champion)

Progress towards an MVP version of Cargo SBOM support by resolving known issues in Cargo’s SBOM precursor feature and finalizing the RFC.

Needs contributor: This goal needs contributors to help with testing, resolving known issues in Cargo’s SBOM precursor, and converting downstream tooling like cargo-cyclonedx. The work is primarily in the rust-lang/cargo repository.

Stabilize public/private dependencies

Ed Page (point of contact), Vadim Petrochenkov (compiler champion)

Implement and stabilize the MVP of public dependencies described in RFC #3516. Public dependencies allow crates to declare dependencies whose types are meant to be exposed in the public API.

Needs contributor: This goal needs a contributor to work with the compiler team on identifying and implementing the minimal lint subset needed for stabilization. The work spans rustc (lint implementation) and Cargo (dependency metadata).