IdeaSift

Rust developers struggle with slow, hard-to-trim cloud SDK builds

Rust developers using large generated cloud SDK crates report long builds, especially for crates such as EC2, and repeated builds add up across tests, Clippy, and release work. Trimming unused generated code can be difficult because the code is entangled, while existing build measurements may not make it easy to compare a specific service across builds. One signal is about general dependency discipline rather than SDK compile times, so it is a less direct fit.

For rust developers using large cloud SDKs. Mentioned from Jun 2021 to Jun 2026 on GitHub and Hacker News.

5 different people described this problem in 2 separate discussions.

Week of 2026-07-13: 0Week of 2026-07-20: 0Week of 2026-07-27: 0Week of 2026-08-03: 0Week of 2026-08-10: 0Week of 2026-08-17: 0Week of 2026-08-24: 0Week of 2026-08-31: 0Week of 2026-09-07: 0Week of 2026-09-14: 0Week of 2026-09-21: 0Week of 2026-09-28: 0
0 mentions in the last 12 weeks
Indie fit
4.0/10
Pain
6.4/10
Frequency
6.5/10
Willingness to pay
0.0/10
Momentum
5.0/10
Who pays
Businesses
Competition
Medium
Build difficulty
Medium

What people said

Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.

  1. For my purposes I actually switched off of using this SDK to instead using a thin wrapper around the AWS CLI and shaved off many many minutes of build time, especially when you consider the separate rebuilds involved for e.g. tests/clippy/release
    blaenk on GitHub (awslabs/aws-sdk-rust)Nov 2022Has a workaroundWants to switch
  2. For a short term fix I am considering forking the generated ec2 crate and removing all the code that is unused by my project. Edit: i attempted stripping out the bits I didnt need but I've given up because of how entangled the generated code is
Build brief

See what to build and who will buy it

  • 2 product ideas with the smallest useful version and pricing
  • 4 places to find your first customers
  • 3 more quotes from people who have this problem
  • Current workarounds, existing solutions and risks