Glossary / Rust and crates
Glossary · Rust and crates · checked Oct 24, 2026
MSRV (minimum supported Rust version)
Short answerMSRV is the oldest Rust compiler a crate promises to build on. Crates declare it with rust-version = "1.70" in Cargo.toml, and Cargo refuses to build on an older toolchain.
Why it matters
If your project is pinned to an older compiler (distro packages, embedded toolchains, a company policy), a dependency that raises its MSRV in a minor release can break your build.
Our number
251 of the 300 top crates we track (84%) declare rust-version in their latest release. Most common values: 1.85 (35), 1.71 (31), 1.60 (18).
Go deeper on this site
Where it shows up here
It appears on 298 pages of this site: 296 Crate pages, 1 Guide, 1 Free tool. A few to start with:
- How to publish a Rust crate to crates.io
- TOML to JSON converter.
- addr2line downloads, and should you depend on it?
- ahash downloads, and should you depend on it?
Sources
- The Cargo Book, the rust-version field: doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/rust-version.html (checked Oct 24, 2026)
Related terms
Up next
Go deeperMSRV of the latest version on every crate pageThe page on this site that does the most with this term.Read it next →Did this answer your question?