CARGO-YANK(1) General Commands Manual CARGO-YANK(1)

cargo-yank — Remove a pushed crate from the index

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

The yank command removes a previously published crate’s version from the server’s index. This command does not delete any data, and the crate will still be available for download via the registry’s download link.

Cargo will not use a yanked version for any new project or checkout without a pre-existing lockfile, and will generate an error if there are no longer any compatible versions for your crate.

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

If the crate name is not specified, it will use the package name from the current directory.

For example, the foo crate published version 1.5.0 and another crate bar declared a dependency on version foo = "1.5". Now foo releases a new, but not semver compatible, version 2.0.0, and finds a critical issue with 1.5.0. If 1.5.0 is yanked, no new project or checkout without an existing lockfile will be able to use crate bar as it relies on 1.5.

In this 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 projects that depend on bar will continue to work.

As another example, 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 table identifies the versions cargo could use in the absence of a lockfile for different SemVer requirements, following a given release being yanked:

Yanked Version / SemVer requirement bar = "1.5.0" bar = "=1.5.0" bar = "2.0.0"
1.5.0 Use either 1.5.1 or 1.5.2 Return Error Use 2.0.0
1.5.1 Use either 1.5.0 or 1.5.2 Use 1.5.0 Use 2.0.0
2.0.0 Use either 1.5.0, 1.5.1 or 1.5.2 Use 1.5.0 Return Error

Crates should only be yanked in exceptional circumstances, for example, an accidental publish, an unintentional SemVer breakages, or a significantly broken and unusable crate. In the case of security vulnerabilities, RustSec https://rustsec.org/ is typically a less disruptive mechanism to inform users and encourage them to upgrade, and avoids the possibility of significant downstream disruption irrespective of susceptibility to the vulnerability in question.

A common workflow is to yank a crate having already published a semver compatible version, to reduce the probability of preventing dependent crates from compiling.

When 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>.

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 the crate only prevents new users from downloading it, but cannot stop those who have already downloaded it from keeping or even spreading the leaked credentials.

--vers version, --version version

The version to yank or un-yank.

--undo

Undo a yank, putting a version back into the index.

--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 https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html environment variables 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.

-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.

+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.

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

•0: Cargo succeeded.
•101: Cargo failed to complete.

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

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