Debian will require Rust for its APT package manager by May 2026, giving alpha, hppa, m68k and sh4 architectures six months to add Rust support.
Debian developer Julian Andres Klode announced on October 28 that APT, Debian’s package manager, will require Rust dependencies starting May 2026. The change affects core functionality including .deb package parsing, archive extraction, and HTTP signature verification.
Technical Requirements
The new dependencies include:
- Rust compiler
- Rust standard library
- Sequoia cryptographic ecosystem
These components will handle security-critical operations currently written in C, aiming to reduce memory-safety vulnerabilities.
Impact on Architectures
Four CPU architectures lack Rust support and face removal:
- alpha
- hppa
- m68k
- sh4
Port maintainers must establish working Rust toolchains within six months or risk their architectures being dropped from Debian.
The email recommends moving forward with modern tools rather than maintaining compatibility with older hardware. For mainstream architectures (amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, riscv64, s390x), users will see no changes as Rust already supports these platforms.
You can read more here:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2025/10/msg00285.html
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