Feature names cannot always be free of placeholder words

[rushmorem]

The recommendation for C-FEATURE says:-

Do not call the feature use-std or with-std or any creative name that is not std.

I like this naming convention. Unfortunately, it's not always possible to follow. For example, say I want to add optional support for serde, the obvious name for such a feature would be serde. However, if some of my types can be derived automatically, I would also want to optionally depend on serde_derive. Part of my manifest will then end up as follows:

[features]
serde = ["serde", "serde_derive"]

[dependencies]
serde = { version = "1", optional = true }
serde_derive = { version = "1", optional = true }

However, this is not possible since feature names must not conflict with other package names in the manifest. In such a case, I will either have to use a name like with-serde or come up with a creative name for my feature.

Edit: Had forgotten to insert a hyperlink

[dtolnay]

You should be using serde = { version = "1.0", optional = true, features = ["derive"] }.

https://serde.rs/feature-flags.html#-feature-derive
https://github.com/serde-rs/serde/blob/v1.0.38/serde/src/lib.rs#L245-L283

[rushmorem]

Awesome! Glad to know that there is already a workaround for this for serde. Thanks @dtolnay :)

It's still an issue for crates that don't implement such workarounds and potentially other use cases but closing in favour of rust-lang/cargo#1286.