Confused between serialize and rustc-serialize

[winding-lines]

What is the relationship between serialize::json and rustc-serialize::json?

The doc pages look very similar to me...
http://doc.rust-lang.org/serialize/json/
http://doc.rust-lang.org/rustc-serialize/rustc-serialize/json/index.html

[BurntSushi]

rustc-serialize used to be included in the standard Rust distribution with the name serialize. It has since moved to its own package on crates.io. I think I can say that you should always be using rustc-serialize.

The reason why this move occurred, AFAIK, is that the serialization infrastructure probably isn't going to be stabilized before Rust 1.0. But, it's extremely useful. The Rust 1.0 stable channel will disallow all uses of unstable things, so the only way to permit continued use of rustc-serialize is to split it out of Rust proper and into its own separate package.

[winding-lines]

Thanks for the explanation :) Should we then remove the docs from http://doc.rust-lang.org/serialize/json/ ?

[Byron]

+1 to downing these docs !

I just lost 30 minutes to figure out how to deserialize json ! Reason was that I of course found the 'serialize' documentation first, which caused all sorts of problems as both crates got mixed up in my code.

It really adds to my frustration as everything I attempt quickly ends up being much more difficult than anticipated. Sure, it's alpha, but there is no need to unnecessarily confuse anyone :).

[alexcrichton]

I'm going to close this now that this crate is deprecated in favor of serde. We're discontinuing feature development in rustc-serialize but will still continue to merge bug fixes if they arise.