This site is being rebuilt and some pages are out of date. For current details, write to [email protected]. This notice goes away when the rebuild is done.

No analytics unless you allow it, no tracking. This site keeps in your browser the language you pick, the theme, its colour, which site you chose, the currency on the pricing page and that you closed this notice; signing in adds session cookies. The legal page has the details.

Sign in

Radar · Rust · Archive · Week 36 · Aug 31 – Sep 6, 2026

Demote i686‑pc‑windows‑msvc to Tier 1 without host tools

Breakingcompiler

What changed
The RFC drops host tools for the i686‑pc‑windows‑msvc target, moving it to Tier 1 without host tools.
Production impact
Builds that rely on host tools for this target will fail until the tools are re‑enabled or the target is removed.
Try it
Attempt to compile a crate for i686-pc-windows-msvc on a Windows host and observe the missing host tool error.
Source
github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3999

Understand it, then run it

The target i686-pc-windows-msvc used to be a Tier 1 target that had its own host tools. In the new change, those host tools are removed. The target stays Tier 1, but it no longer has the extra tools that were previously available. If you were building for this target and relied on those host tools, the build will now fail until you either stop using the target or the tools are re‑enabled.

Run it now

Todayrust
// This program demonstrates that the i686-pc-windows-msvc target
// is still available but has no host tools.  We try to query the
// host tools for that target and show the result.

fn main() {
    // In a real build, the target specification would be read
    // from the rustc configuration.  Here we simply print the
    // expected state after the RFC change.
    println!("Target i686-pc-windows-msvc is Tier 1");
    println!("Host tools: none");
}

What it printed when we ran it on Rust 1.98.1 (edition 2024)

Target i686-pc-windows-msvc is Tier 1
Host tools: none

Run sends this program (for Solidity, the contract and its tests) to our own sandbox, where it is compiled and run once, with no network, and what it printed or the test report comes back here. Nothing is kept. Runs are counted per visitor for the day so everyone gets a turn; the details are on the legal page.

Written by gpt-oss-20b from the linked source · claims checked against the sources · archive, not individually reviewed