Poor error from cargo update --precise when upgrading to pre-release

[eopb]

Problem

Starting with a working project that depends on cargo-pretag-version-issue-test = "0.1.0", running cargo update -p cargo-pretag-version-issue-test --precise 0.1.1-pre0 returns an unhelpful error message.

> cargo update -p cargo-pretag-version-issue-test --precise 0.1.1-pre0
    Updating crates.io index
error: no matching package named `cargo-pretag-version-issue-test` found
location searched: registry `crates-io`
required by package `tmp-08luyo v0.1.0 (/home/ethan/.cache/cargo-temp/tmp-08luyo)`

Steps

I created cargo-pretag-version-issue-test to demonstrate this issue. It has two versions, 0.1.0 and 0.1.1-pre0.

> cargo new issue
     Created binary (application) `issue` package

> cargo add cargo-pretag-version-issue-test
    Updating crates.io index
      Adding cargo-pretag-version-issue-test v0.1.0 to dependencies.
    Updating crates.io index

> cargo tree
issue v0.1.0 (/home/ethan/.cache/cargo-temp/issue)
└── cargo-pretag-version-issue-test v0.1.0

> cargo update -p cargo-pretag-version-issue-test --precise 0.1.1-pre0
    Updating crates.io index
error: no matching package named `cargo-pretag-version-issue-test` found
location searched: registry `crates-io`
required by package `issue v0.1.0 (/home/ethan/.cache/cargo-temp/issue)`

Possible Solution(s)

Either,

• Allow upgrading to pre-release versions via cargo update --precise

or

• Display a reason why the version could not be selected rather than saying it could not be found

Notes

No response

Version

Tested on both

cargo 1.72.0 (103a7ff2e 2023-08-15)
release: 1.72.0
commit-hash: 103a7ff2ee7678d34f34d778614c5eb2525ae9de
commit-date: 2023-08-15
host: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
libgit2: 1.6.4 (sys:0.17.2 vendored)
libcurl: 8.1.2-DEV (sys:0.4.63+curl-8.1.2 vendored ssl:OpenSSL/1.1.1u)
ssl: OpenSSL 1.1.1u  30 May 2023
os: NixOS 23.5.0 [64-bit]

and

cargo 1.74.0-nightly (925280f02 2023-08-25)
release: 1.74.0-nightly
commit-hash: 925280f028db3a322935e040719a0754703947cf
commit-date: 2023-08-25
host: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
libgit2: 1.6.4 (sys:0.17.2 vendored)
libcurl: 8.2.1-DEV (sys:0.4.65+curl-8.2.1 vendored ssl:OpenSSL/1.1.1u)
ssl: OpenSSL 1.1.1u  30 May 2023
os: NixOS 23.5.0 [64-bit]

[ehuss]

Per a brief discussion on Zulip at https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/246057-t-cargo/topic/Semver.20compatible.20pre-release.20versions.20.28maybe.20pre-RFC.29, the changes related to #12425 may change it so that cargo update -p foo --precise 1.0.0-alpha will start working (by changing Cargo.toml to the pre-release version).

If that happens, I'm not sure if it is worth putting effort into improving the error message. It probably wouldn't hurt, but I'm not sure how complex that would be.

[eopb]

#13290 also proposes changes to the behavior of this operation. This error can probably be replaced by an unstable feature warning as part of the work on precise_pre_releases