This would be unfortunate for Gentoo. We’re currently one of the few Linux distributions that aim to provide a reasonable working experience for people with older, weaker or more niche hardware that is not supported by Rust; and given that we’re largely talking about volunteers with no corporate backing, there is practically zero chance of ever porting LLVM and Rust to the relevant platforms, let alone providing long-term maintenance needed for keeping them working in projects with such a high rate of code churn.
I do realize that these platforms are not “supported” by CPython right now. Nevertheless, even though there historically were efforts to block building on them, they currently work and require comparatively little maintenance effort to keep them working. Admittedly, the wider Python ecosystem with its Rust adoption puts quite a strain on us and the user experience worsens every few months, we still manage to provide a working setup.
The moment CPython starts requiring Rust, this will no longer be possible. Of course, we will still be able to provide older versions of CPython for a few years, at least until some major package starts requiring the newer Python version.
That said, I do realize that we’re basically obsolete and it’s just a matter of time until some projects pulls the switch and force us to tell our users “sorry, we are no longer able to provide a working system for you”.
I don’t expect to change anything here. Just wanted to share the other perspective.