It brings the Rust compiler in as a dependency. I'm not saying you have to use Rust for the rest of the project, but it complicates things in a way that having C source code that you drop into your project doesn't.

I think you two are talking at cross-purposes. You are correct that building the project would require Rust. Your parent is correct that, with a pre-built binary, you don't need any Rust-specific stuff installed to make this work.

Building from source is usual, of course, given the lack of a stable ABI.