::cratesio-placeholder-package

If there is nothing in a crate, then a fortiori, there is nothing wrong with it either!

If you depend on a crate and it is empty, did you really depend on that crate?

Rationale

Sometimes you may want to publish a crate having a private / git / local dependency, which is useful for local or experimental development stuff, but which prevents your crate from being published.

In that case, you can use this ~~hack~~ empty placeholder package in its stead:

```toml

Cargo.toml

[dependencies.your-crate-proxy]

What public / crates.io users will see/use:

package = "cratesio-placeholder-package" version = "=0.0.0"

What path dependents will use

path = "path/to/your-crate-proxy" ```

and then have a your-crate-proxy crate, at version 0.0.0, somewhere in your private project layout, which correctly depends on the other private stuff you may need.

```toml

path/to/your-crate-proxy/Cargo.toml

[package] name = "cratesio-placeholder-package" version = "0.0.0"

[dependencies]

the real private dependency(ies)

your-crate.path = "private/your-crate" ```

Feature: proxying Cargo features

Sometimes, you may also want to proxy features from the frontend to your private dependency / to transitively enable feature from the private dependency.

In order to do that, such features will need to be proxied through this cratesio-placeholder-package

Hence why this package also features a total of 26 placeholder features (placeholder-feature-a, placeholder-feature-b, …, placeholder-feature-z) which you can use to achieve proper feature transitivity:

```toml

Cargo.toml

[features] foo = ["your-crate-proxy/placeholder-feature-a"]

[dependencies.your-crate-proxy]

What public / crates.io users will see/use:

package = "cratesio-placeholder-package" version = "=0.0.0"

What path dependents will use

path = "path/to/your-crate-proxy" ```

+

```toml

path/to/your-crate-proxy/Cargo.toml

[package] name = "cratesio-placeholder-package" version = "0.0.0"

[dependencies]

the real private dependency(ies)

your-crate.path = "private/your-crate"

[features] placeholder-feature-a = ["your-crate/foo"] ```