`ft` does not play well with other `cargo` plugins

[fenollp]

I believe the intended usage of this command is basically to allow

alias cargo='cargo ft'

However today's argument parsing does not allow this with other "combinatorial" plugins such as auditable

Expected Behavior

I expect cargo ft auditable build .. to build code with both plugins.

Actual Behavior

This fails:

     cargo-ft.git master λ cargo ft auditable build --locked --frozen --offline --all-features
error: unrecognized subcommand 'auditable'

Usage: cargo-ft <COMMAND>

For more information, try '--help'.
2    cargo-ft.git master λ 

This however works:

     cargo-ft.git master λ cargo auditable ft build  --locked --frozen --offline --all-features
  Collecting metadata
       Using default behavior for cargo-ft because missing metadata
    Finished `dev` profile [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.02s

Possible Fix

I believe this is mainly an args parsing issue where ft expects cargo subcommands immediately (build, test, ...) instead of eg. auditable.

This issue may not be fixable in the general case, for example with cargo plugins that compile things regardless of --target.

Your Environment

• Version used: v0.2.0
• Environment name and version (e.g. cargo 1.74): 1.85
• Operating System and version: Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS

[stormshield-guillaumed]

The argument parser doesn't allow arbitrary cargo subcommands because cargo-ft filters the list of packages so it expects a subcommand accepting the --package flag which is most of the build commands. The auditable plugin seems to allow any subcommand, so combining ft and auditable with a cargo subcommand that doesn't accept --package flag will break as ft will add those flags. For example, cargo ft auditable info will be transformed into cargo auditable info --package ... and the info subcommand doesn't accept --package flag.

One way to do it would be to maintain a list of subcommands accepting the --package flag and keep the actual behavior for them, and for other subcommands, skip the entire ft process and call the subcommand as is. However, this won't solve your problem because auditable doesn't always accept the --package flag, so cargo ft auditable ... will always be the same as cargo auditable ..., and this is probably not what you want.

Hopefully, what cargo-ft does will be built in cargo soon https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2025/02/27/this-development-cycle-in-cargo-1.86.html#specifying-supported-platforms-in-packages