cargo add cannot enable features if version="*" in Cargo.toml

[georgmu]

Problem

When trying to run cargo add crate -F feature with crate = "*" or crate = { version="*" } in Cargo.toml, an error is returned.

Steps

1. Add time = "*" to Cargo.toml
2. Run the following command:

$ cargo +nightly add time -F serde
    Updating crates.io index
      Adding time * to dependencies
error: unrecognized feature for crate time: serde
no features available for crate time

3. Change time = "*" to time = "0.3"
4. Run the command again:

$ cargo +nightly add time -F serde
    Updating crates.io index
      Adding time v0.3 to dependencies
             Features as of v0.3.0:
             + alloc
             + serde
             + std
             - formatting
             - itoa
             - large-dates
             - local-offset
             - macros
             - parsing
             - quickcheck
             - quickcheck-dep
             - rand
             - serde-human-readable
             - time-macros

List of features changes when using the last concrete version (0.3.36).

Possible Solution(s)

For version="*", I would expect that it uses the feature list of the used root dependency (as in Cargo.lock) or of the latest version available.

Notes

No response

Version

cargo 1.83.0-nightly (80d82ca 2024-09-27)
release: 1.83.0-nightly
commit-hash: 80d82ca
commit-date: 2024-09-27
host: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
libgit2: 1.8.1 (sys:0.19.0 vendored)
libcurl: 8.9.0-DEV (sys:0.4.74+curl-8.9.0 vendored ssl:OpenSSL/1.1.1w)
ssl: OpenSSL 1.1.1w 11 Sep 2023
os: Fedora 41.0.0 (FortyOne) [64-bit]

[epage]

When cargo add looks for available features to display and validate against, it looks to the oldest version compatible with your version requirement, assuming

1. You set the minimum supported version in your version requirement
2. The dependency doesn't remove features, making this the lowest common denominator for your version requirement. Granted, this gets fuzzy with multi-major version requirements.

In your case, its picking time = "0.1.0" and only allowing features from that version.