Rfcs: Cargo install has no way of upgrading

[clarfonthey]

It'd be nice if there were a cargo install --upgrade or similar flag that would cargo install --force a crate if its version has been bumped. This could be configured to only allow major, minor, or bugfix releases.

[mark-i-m]

I just had to deal with this again yesterday...

It would also be kind of nice to have cargo update similar to rustup update

[est31]

cc https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/2082

[japaric]

FWIW, there's a (non official) Cargo [subcommand] that does this.

[Centril]

@japaric that's nice (it doesn't always compile tho...), but this should really be part of cargo proper and not relegated to a subcommand.

[beatgammit]

Some related things I'd like from cargo:

• list of installed things
• versions of installed things and whether there are updates
• ability to upgrade multiple things

I try to move toward repository versions of things once they land (e.g. ripgrep), but sometimes that's just not going to happen (e.g. cargo subcommands). I like to stay up-to-date (mostly for latest bugfixes), and it would be nice if there was a simple command I could run to update everything, or at least give me a list of stuff to update.

This probably belongs in a separate RFC, but I feel it's relevant to the discussion here and I'd like to see resolution on this before submitting a separate RFC.

[steveklabnik]

@beatgammit https://crates.io/crates/cargo-update has all of that.

[beatgammit]

Sweet, thanks! In that case, I'm on board with not doing this in cargo to highlight that it's not meant for managing packages.

Honestly, cargo install --list already solves my first bullet point and half of the second, and I can always do cargo search to manually check for versions of things. The only think I may add is having cargo install --list check the registry cache for updated versions, but that's really it. However, I don't think it's really necessary for cargo to do this.

[nashley]

to highlight that it's not meant for managing packages

Is this still true? cargo is used by a number of programs as an installation tool. Why should it not be in the business of package management?