What Should Rust Prioritize in 2023? Governance, Compiler Rewrite, and More

First, thank you for using Rust in 2022!

Thanks to all contributors, teams, the foundation, the community, and the many users. It has been a busy year, and without the effort of many volunteers, none of this would have happened.

I have some thoughts on what should be prioritized in 2023.

Two big things

The most important issue is that the Rust project needs to solve developer governance and leadership problems. These obstacles create a growing "governance debt" that hinders many promising efforts.

It is embarrassing that, a year after the Rust core team collapsed, there is still no proposal for a new leadership team. I call loudly for people to take on this difficult task.

Rust governance still has much work to do, mainly updating the RFC process and re‑examining team and work‑organization structures, which are currently blocked by leadership challenges.

Secondly, due to the lack of project leaders, we need to revisit the "stable but not stagnant" strategy. Avoiding stagnation is crucial: we must keep innovating without letting the language grow unchecked, as complexity and scale come at a cost that conflicts with Rust's mission of enabling reliable, high‑performance software.

We should not stop innovating or merely slow down; instead, we need a framework that allows innovation to happen outside the core community, without requiring every change to depend on a stable, mature language.

It is time to consider rewriting the compiler. While a rewrite is often risky, at this point of Rust's maturity the potential benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

If the project succeeds, we can learn a great deal; if it fails, we still gain insights. A rewrite would enable incremental and parallel compilation, improve compile times, and reduce technical debt, especially when combined with a future "language 2.0".

Some "smaller" things

Cargo (and crates.io) are critical tools, yet they suffer from severe resource constraints, slowing progress on supply‑chain security, integration with other languages and build systems, and build‑time improvements.

There is an opportunity to invest in the Cargo and crates.io teams, mentor new members, and attract support from large companies so that contributors can spend a quarter of their time on Cargo, accelerating development and creating a virtuous cycle of contributions.

Async: Rust's async programming work is progressing well, and I hope to see integration and results in 2023.

Unsafe programming: Significant work has been done on unsafe‑code guidelines, defining the Rust memory model, and providing tools for safe unsafe programming. Continuing this effort is vital because safety is Rust's main selling point.

Completion and polishing: The team should focus more on finishing and polishing rough edges rather than starting new work, as many features remain unstable, partially implemented, or long‑planned but missing.

Finally

I'm excited to see Rust's data analysis and numerical computing ecosystem grow rapidly next year, especially with projects like Polars reaching a maturity tipping point.

Happy 2023!