Why most Iced examples have public main function?

[lucatrv]

As in subject, why use pub fn main instead of fn main?

See for instance documentation examples for Application and Sandbox. Moreover, most provided code examples use pub fn main (for instance Arc), but some use fn main (for instance Sierpinski Triangle Emulator).

According to this discussion, pub fn main is needed only if you also build a library from the same source file, which is a rare situation, so I would expect Iced examples to employ the most common use case fn main.

[hecrj]

I personally like to explicitly declare it public since it is the main entrypoint of an application and, therefore, being called externally. The examples that don't use it are most likely contributions by other users.

[lucatrv]

I see... Just to give my 2 cents on this, IMHO in Rust it is good practice to declare public only the very bare minimum that needs to be accessed externally. As an example, by design even if you declare a struct as public, then you also need to declare every element as public to have it accessible. Actually in Rust everything is private by default to improve safety. By declaring main as public, you allow everyone to run it as if it was a library function, which is not advisable unless it is specifically designed for that. That is why IMHO in Rust it would be better not to declare main as public in general.

[hecrj]

You did not directly address my point.

The situation you mention is very rare and harmless (main functions are inherently public, self-contained, and standalone). I feel your argument doesn't do much to invalidate my point (main functions are inherently public!).

I also feel this is a very nitpicky discussion. Why should we waste any energy on this?

[lucatrv]

OK never mind, my question was for me to understand why some main functions were marked as public, and you already answered that. So I am closing this discussion and I agree we should not waste energy on this.