cargo-workspace plugin cannot handle dependency cycles in dev-dependencies

[thomaseizinger]

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It is a library issue.

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• Search the issues already opened: https://github.com/googleapis/release-please/issues: Couldn't find anything.
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Environment details

• OS: Manjaro Linux
• Node.js version: 18.8.0
• npm version: 8.19.1
• release-please version: 14.7.2

Steps to reproduce

1. Have a cargo workspace that has dependency cycles with dev dependencies.
2. Try to use the cargo-workspace plugin of release-please.

Cargo supports dependency cycles in the form of A -dep-> B -dev-dep-> A. In other words, I can have a crate A that depends on B but B can depend on A again in its dev-dependencies. release-please doesn't seem to allow this which I think is an unnecessary restriction. Version bumping of dev-dependencies should not impact the version of a package so perhaps dev-dependencies should just be ignored here: https://github.com/googleapis/release-please/blob/main/src/updaters/rust/common.ts#L71

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Thanks!

[chingor13]

Sorry, for the super late response to this one.

It looks like there's 2 issues:

1. release-please throws an error on circular dependencies which could be valid
2. you'd like an option for a dev-dependency version bump not forcing a patch bump

[thomaseizinger]

Sorry, for the super late response to this one.

It looks like there's 2 issues:

1. release-please throws an error on circular dependencies which could be valid

2. you'd like an option for a dev-dependency version bump not forcing a patch bump

Correct. We've resolved (1) on our end by getting rid of circular dependencies. That had other positive impacts.

I think (2) is still an issue. Bumping a dev-dependency should not warrant a version bump because it is not user facing.

[EqualMa]

I found a workaround by renaming dependencies:

[dev-dependencies]
my-lib-dev = { path = "../my-lib", package = "my-lib" }

Then you can extern crate my_lib_dev as my_lib so that you can use ::my_lib other than ::my_lib_dev.

The cargo-workspace plugin is not smart enough to find out my-lib-dev is actually my-lib. Thus, cycle dependencies won't be reported.