cargo install cargo-edit --no-default-features fails to compile

[zack@laptop ~]$ cargo install cargo-edit --no-default-features
⋮
error[E0433]: failed to resolve: use of unresolved module or unlinked crate `clap`
  --> /home/zack/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cargo-edit-0.13.7/src/errors.rs:55:11
   |
55 | impl From<clap::Error> for CliError {
   |           ^^^^ use of unresolved module or unlinked crate `clap`
   |
   = help: if you wanted to use a crate named `clap`, use `cargo add clap` to add it to your `Cargo.toml`

error[E0433]: failed to resolve: use of unresolved module or unlinked crate `clap`
  --> /home/zack/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cargo-edit-0.13.7/src/errors.rs:56:18
   |
56 |     fn from(err: clap::Error) -> CliError {
   |                  ^^^^ use of unresolved module or unlinked crate `clap`
   |
   = help: if you wanted to use a crate named `clap`, use `cargo add clap` to add it to your `Cargo.toml`

For more information about this error, try `rustc --explain E0433`.
error: could not compile `cargo-edit` (lib) due to 2 previous errors
warning: build failed, waiting for other jobs to finish...
error: failed to compile `cargo-edit v0.13.7`, intermediate artifacts can be found at `/tmp/cargo-installgFtuDU`.
To reuse those artifacts with a future compilation, set the environment variable `CARGO_TARGET_DIR` to that path.

Machine info:

[zack@laptop ~]$ uname -a
Linux laptop 6.16.3-arch1-1 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sat, 23 Aug 2025 15:32:49 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[zack@laptop ~]$ cargo -V
cargo 1.89.0 (c24e10642 2025-06-23)

If one must enable certain features, ideally compile_error would be used informing a user the minimum set of features that must be enabled; otherwise any use of clap should be gated behind a cfg attribute based on the set of features that enable it.

While this is a bug, its relatively minor in my opinion.

The big issue is that cargo does not report the error about nothing to install until after it has compiled things

$ cargo install pulldown-cmark --no-default-features
    Updating crates.io index
  Installing pulldown-cmark v0.13.0
    Updating crates.io index
     Locking 3 packages to latest compatible versions
   Compiling pulldown-cmark v0.13.0
   Compiling bitflags v2.9.3
   Compiling unicase v2.8.1
   Compiling memchr v2.7.5
    Finished `release` profile [optimized] target(s) in 2.12s
warning: none of the package's binaries are available for install using the selected features
  bin "pulldown-cmark" requires the features: `getopts`
  example "broken-link-callbacks" requires the features: `html`
  example "event-filter" requires the features: `html`
  example "events" requires the features:
  example "footnote-rewrite" requires the features: `html`
  example "normalize-wikilink" requires the features: `html`
  example "parser-map-event-print" requires the features: `html`
2 more targets also requires features not enabled. See them in the Cargo.toml file.
Consider enabling some of the needed features by passing, e.g., `--features="getopts"`

This is being tracked in rust-lang/cargo#8970

I'm unsure I understand. I cloned the repo and added a simple #[cfg(feature = "cli")] to the mentioned From impl, and cargo build --release --no-default-features compiles just fine. Are you saying that it shouldn't compile at all if cli is not enabled or that cargo-edit is useless without at least that feature enabled? If so, then compile_error would still be appropriate in my opinion.

cargo build --release --no-default-features will build but cargo install --release --no-default-features will error because all of the binaries require some feature to be enabled.

cargo-edit is a library (which is all that is left without features) is not generally a priority, see https://docs.rs/cargo-edit/latest/cargo_edit/#semver-compatibility

The right fix is adding the appropriate #[cfg]s, its just a low priority for me to do anything about it.

OK, can you tell me what the minimum set of features are for the binary? Is cli enough?

We have a feature per binary, see

cargo-edit/Cargo.toml

Lines 38 to 56 in d722ed8

    
           [[bin]] 
        
           name = "cargo-add" 
        
           path = "src/bin/add/main.rs" 
        
           required-features = ["add"] 
        
           [[bin]] 
        
           name = "cargo-rm" 
        
           path = "src/bin/rm/main.rs" 
        
           required-features = ["rm"] 
        
           [[bin]] 
        
           name = "cargo-upgrade" 
        
           path = "src/bin/upgrade/main.rs" 
        
           required-features = ["upgrade"] 
        
           [[bin]] 
        
           name = "cargo-set-version" 
        
           path = "src/bin/set-version/main.rs" 
        
           required-features = ["set-version"]

You can set a compiler_error in lib.rs to short-circuit erroneous compilation:

#[cfg(not(feature = "cli"))]
{
    compile_error!("At least 1 feature is required to install");
}

This would help avoid duplicate issues in the future and provide a more meaningful error message.

Please disregard if this crate is intended to be a lib crate as well as a binary crate.

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`cargo install cargo-edit --no-default-features` fails to compile #947

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	[[bin]]
	name = "cargo-add"
	path = "src/bin/add/main.rs"
	required-features = ["add"]

	[[bin]]
	name = "cargo-rm"
	path = "src/bin/rm/main.rs"
	required-features = ["rm"]

	[[bin]]
	name = "cargo-upgrade"
	path = "src/bin/upgrade/main.rs"
	required-features = ["upgrade"]

	[[bin]]
	name = "cargo-set-version"
	path = "src/bin/set-version/main.rs"
	required-features = ["set-version"]

cargo install cargo-edit --no-default-features fails to compile #947

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epage commented on Aug 27, 2025

zacknewman commented on Aug 27, 2025

epage commented on Aug 27, 2025

zacknewman commented on Aug 27, 2025

epage commented on Aug 27, 2025

2bndy5 commented on Sep 11, 2025

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`cargo install cargo-edit --no-default-features` fails to compile #947