Over-Reliance on External Crates is an Anti-Pattern in Rust
doodlestein · x · 2026-07-18
The author argues that excessive use of external dependencies in Rust projects is an anti-pattern. Most libraries suffer from feature creep and massive dependency chains to maintain generality, increasing the risk of supply chain attacks. Furthermore, many libraries rely on C/C++ under the hood or heavily utilize unsafe code, undermining Rust's memory safety and complicating cross-platform compilation. General-purpose libraries also often lack extreme performance optimizations for specific hardware (like Apple Silicon or high-core-count AMD processors).
To solve this, the author decided to drop the ready-made Tantivy search library in their AI-related project (FrankenSearch) in favor of building a custom lexical search system. This move is expected to eliminate 41 Crate dependencies, drastically improving security and runtime efficiency. The author emphasizes that the biggest advantage of building core modules in-house is avoiding the "generality tax," allowing for extreme customization and continuous performance tuning tailored to specific needs.
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