serde_yaml package is deprecated and no longer maintained

[gnattishness]

Description

As of release 0.9.34, serde_yaml is deprecated and the repository has been archived.

Version

Lighthouse stable and unstable

Present Behaviour

Currently lighthouse depends on serde_yaml 0.9.34+deprecated
It is currently working and there are no vulnerabilities that I am aware of.

Steps to resolve

Consider alternatives.
At this stage, keeping serde_yaml may be preferable while alternatives become more mature and vetted.
Want to be careful to avoid a supply chain attack.

• https://crates.io/crates/serde_yaml_ng appears to be a sincere fork intended as a drop-in replacement
  • the original maintainer of serde_yaml has highlighted limitations with the existing libyaml backend (unmaintained) here, stating that an improved backend would be a pure rust implementation, or a close translation of libfyaml C code
    • Apparently libyaml doesn't support Yaml 1.2 properly, but I don't know much about that
• https://github.com/saphyr-rs/saphyr is a recently created project based on yaml-rust (that is no longer maintained)
  • They also maintain a yaml_rust2 intended to be backwards compatible
  • It does not currently support serde, but intends to and it looks like that will eventually be in a saphyr-serde crate
• There's a serde-yml fork that has more downloads on crates.io but seems a bit suspicious and I'd recommend against it.

[gnattishness]

About the serde-yml fork and related libyml that seem dodgy and suspicious:

• There's some discussion here https://users.rust-lang.org/t/serde-yaml-deprecation-alternatives/108868/42

  just glanced at that project's dependencies, and it seems to have added a number of irrelevant dependencies for no discernable reason, including openssl, env_logger, and figlet-rs. I don't trust it.

• Evidence of figlet-rs and openssl dependencies https://crates.io/crates/serde_yml/0.0.5/dependencies though that code no longer appears to be in the repo's git history
• They disabled github issues at the time of this comment
• Clearing and modifying git history
• The choice of the "Typosquatting" name, which is easily used