Rust Is Coming To Debian's APT Package Manager

A maintainer of Debian's Advanced Package Tool (APT) 'has announced plans to introduce hard Rust dependencies into APT starting May 2026,' reports the blog It's FOSS.

The integration targets critical areas like parsing.deb,.ar, and tar files plus HTTP signature verification using Sequoia. [APT maintainer Julian Andres Klode] said these components 'would strongly benefit from memory safe languages and a stronger approach to unit testing.'

He also gave a firm message to maintainers of Debian ports: 'If you maintain a port without a working Rust toolchain, please ensure it has one within the next 6 months, or sunset the port.'

The reasoning is straightforward. Debian wants to move forward with modern tools rather than being held back by legacy architecture... Debian ports running on CPU architectures without Rust compiler support have six months to add proper toolchains. If they can't meet this deadline, those ports will need to be discontinued. As a result, some obscure or legacy platforms may lose official support. For most users on mainstream architectures like x86_64 and ARM, nothing changes. Your APT will simply become more secure and reliable under the hood.

It's FOSS argues that 'If done right, this could significantly strengthen APT's security and code quality.'

And the blog Linuxiac also supports the move. 'By embedding Rust into APT, the distro joins a growing number of major open-source projects, such as the Linux kernel, Firefox, and systemd, that are gradually adopting Rust. And if I had to guess, I'd say this is just one of the first steps toward even deeper Rust integration in this legendary distribution, which is a good thing.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.