Re:Oak: A more portable alternative to C, powered by Brainfu...
by steveklabnik on Sunday July 26, 2020 @10:42AM
(#23957387)
They may be referring to the Windows MSVC target, where you have to install the C++ build tools to get access to link.exe.
... that being said, if they distributed a binary, you wouldn’t need any of that, too.
You... don't?
Default installation size of the Rust toolchain is about 800mb extracted to disk, way less so of downloading.
Hardly an inordinate filesize for a development toolchain. For example, MSYS is 950mb just for the C++ toolchain. You might shave a lot on Linux thanks to package reuse, but "conceptually" it would be about the same size, just that in practice you start with some parts downloaded.