CARGO-YANK(1)

📦 version 1.93.1, in ubuntu resolute

💅 NAME 💅

cargo-yank — bestie, this is how you take a pushed crate back out of the index. No deleting, just ✨de-listing✨.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

cargo yank [options] crate@version
cargo yank [options] --version version [crate]

🫶 DESCRIPTION 🫶

okay so the yank command pulls a version of a crate you already published out of the server's index. It does NOT delete any data — the crate is still very much downloadable via the registry's download link. It's giving "unlisted", not "deleted", and those are different vibes fr fr.

Cargo won't use a yanked version for any new project or checkout that doesn't already have a lockfile, and it will throw an error if there are no longer any compatible versions left for your crate. 😭

This command requires you to be authenticated, either with the --token option or by using cargo-login(1).

If you don't specify the crate name, it just uses the package name from the current directory. Convenient. Slay.

🌸 How yank works 🌸

So picture this. The foo crate published version 1.5.0, and another crate bar declared a dependency on version foo = "1.5". Now foo drops a new — but not semver compatible — version 2.0.0, and then finds a critical issue with 1.5.0. If 1.5.0 gets yanked, then no new project or checkout without an existing lockfile will be able to use crate bar, because bar relies on 1.5. Oops. 💀

In that case, the maintainers of foo should first publish a semver compatible version such as 1.5.1 prior to yanking 1.5.0, so that bar and all the projects depending on bar keep working. Order matters, bestie.

Another example for you: consider a crate bar with published versions 1.5.0, 1.5.1, 1.5.2, 2.0.0 and 3.0.0. The following list shows which versions cargo could use, in the absence of a lockfile, for different SemVer requirements, after a given release has been yanked:

  • Yanked version 1.5.0:
    • with bar = "1.5.0" → Use either 1.5.1 or 1.5.2
    • with bar = "=1.5.0" → Return Error
    • with bar = "2.0.0" → Use 2.0.0
  • Yanked version 1.5.1:
    • with bar = "1.5.0" → Use either 1.5.0 or 1.5.2
    • with bar = "=1.5.0" → Use 1.5.0
    • with bar = "2.0.0" → Use 2.0.0
  • Yanked version 2.0.0:
    • with bar = "1.5.0" → Use either 1.5.0, 1.5.1 or 1.5.2
    • with bar = "=1.5.0" → Use 1.5.0
    • with bar = "2.0.0" → Return Error

🎀 When to yank 🎀

Crates should only be yanked in exceptional circumstances. Like, we're talking: an accidental publish, an unintentional SemVer breakage, or a significantly broken and unusable crate. That's it, that's the list. 🙈

If it's about security vulnerabilities, then RustSec (<https://rustsec.org/>) is typically a less disruptive mechanism to inform users and encourage them to upgrade, and it avoids the possibility of significant downstream disruption irrespective of susceptibility to the vulnerability in question. iykyk.

A common workflow is to yank a crate having already published a semver compatible version — this reduces the probability of preventing dependent crates from compiling. Protect the ecosystem, queen. 👑

When you're addressing copyright, licensing, or personal data issues with a published crate, simply yanking it may not suffice. In such cases, contact the maintainers of the registry you used. For crates.io, refer to their policies (<https://crates.io/policies>) and contact them at <help@crates.io>. Real ones will help you out.

If credentials have been leaked, the recommended course of action is to revoke them immediately. Once a crate has been published, it is impossible to determine if the leaked credentials have been copied. Yanking only prevents Cargo from selecting this version when resolving dependencies by default. Existing lock files or direct downloads are not affected, so yanking cannot stop further spreading of the leaked credentials. This is the important one, bestie, don't skip it. 😭

💖 OPTIONS 💖

🌈 Yank Options 🌈

  • --vers version, --version version — the version to yank or un-yank. That's the whole job.
  • --undo — undo a yank, putting a version back into the index. The "jk jk" of Cargo. ✨
  • --token token — API token to use when authenticating. This overrides the token stored in the credentials file (which is created by cargo-login(1)).

Cargo config environment variables (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html>) can be used to override the tokens stored in the credentials file. The token for crates.io may be specified with the CARGO_REGISTRY_TOKEN environment variable. Tokens for other registries may be specified with environment variables of the form CARGO_REGISTRIES_NAME_TOKEN where NAME is the name of the registry in all capital letters.

  • --index index — the URL of the registry index to use.
  • --registry registry — name of the registry to use. Registry names are defined in Cargo config files (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html>). If not specified, the default registry is used, which is defined by the registry.default config key which defaults to crates-io.

⭐ Display Options ⭐

  • -v, --verbose — use verbose output. May be specified twice for "very verbose" output, which includes extra output such as dependency warnings and build script output. May also be specified with the term.verbose config value (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html>).
  • -q, --quiet — do not print cargo log messages. May also be specified with the term.quiet config value (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html>).
  • --color when — control when colored output is used. Valid values:
    • auto (default): automatically detect if color support is available on the terminal.
    • always: always display colors.
    • never: never display colors.

May also be specified with the term.color config value (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html>).

💜 Common Options 💜

  • +toolchain — if Cargo has been installed with rustup, and the first argument to cargo begins with +, it will be interpreted as a rustup toolchain name (such as +stable or +nightly). See the rustup documentation (<https://rust-lang.github.io/rustup/overrides.html>) for more information about how toolchain overrides work.
  • --config KEY=VALUE or PATH — overrides a Cargo configuration value. The argument should be in TOML syntax of KEY=VALUE, or provided as a path to an extra configuration file. This flag may be specified multiple times. See the command-line overrides section (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html#command-line-overrides>) for more information.
  • -C PATH — changes the current working directory before executing any specified operations. This affects things like where cargo looks by default for the project manifest (Cargo.toml), as well as the directories searched for discovering .cargo/config.toml, for example. This option must appear before the command name, for example cargo -C path/to/my-project build.
This option is only available on the nightly channel (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/appendix-07-nightly-rust.html>) and requires the -Z unstable-options flag to enable (see #10098 <https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/10098>).
  • -h, --help — prints help information.
  • -Z flag — unstable (nightly-only) flags to Cargo. Run cargo -Z help for details.

🦋 ENVIRONMENT 🦋

See the reference (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/environment-variables.html>) for details on environment variables that Cargo reads.

🍓 EXIT STATUS 🍓

  1. 0: Cargo succeeded. 🎉
  2. 101: Cargo failed to complete. 😭

🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

  1. Yank a crate from the index:
cargo yank foo@1.0.7

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

cargo(1), cargo-login(1), cargo-publish(1)

and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 this was CARGO-YANK(1) from the General Commands Manual, section 1, and it ate, no cap. now go forth and yank responsibly, mwah 🎀✨

📦 where this page comes from