rtk-ai/rtk vs watchexec/cargo-watch
Both showing Healthy signals — pick on fit, not health
As of June 2026, rtk and cargo-watch both show healthy maintenance signals. rtk last saw a commit 1 month ago with 18+ active contributors, while cargo-watch last saw a commit 1 year ago with 10+ active contributors. rtk is Apache-2.0-licensed while cargo-watch is CC0-1.0-licensed. Neither has known critical or high-severity CVEs in its dependency tree.
Informational only. RepoPilot summarises public signals at the time of analysis. Not professional, security, or legal advice.
rtk-ai/rtk →
Healthy across the board
Permissive license, no critical CVEs, actively maintained — safe to depend on.
Has a license, tests, and CI — clean foundation to fork and modify.
Documented and popular — useful reference codebase to read through.
No critical CVEs, sane security posture — runnable as-is.
- ⚠Concentrated ownership — top contributor handles 63% of recent commits
- ✓Last commit today
- ✓18 active contributors
- ✓Apache-2.0 licensed
- ✓CI configured
- ✓Tests present
Computed from maintenance signals — commit recency, contributor breadth, bus factor, license, CI, tests
watchexec/cargo-watch →
Healthy across all four use cases
Permissive license, no critical CVEs, actively maintained — safe to depend on.
Has a license, tests, and CI — clean foundation to fork and modify.
Documented and popular — useful reference codebase to read through.
No critical CVEs, sane security posture — runnable as-is.
- ⚠Stale — last commit 1y ago
- ⚠Concentrated ownership — top contributor handles 78% of recent commits
- ✓10 active contributors
- ✓CC0-1.0 licensed
- ✓CI configured
- ✓Tests present
Computed from maintenance signals — commit recency, contributor breadth, bus factor, license, CI, tests
Signal-by-signal breakdown
| rtk | cargo-watch | |
|---|---|---|
| Stars | 43,729 | 2,862 |
| Last commit | 1mo ago | 1y ago |
| License | Apache-2.0 | CC0-1.0 |
| Open issues | 829 | 33 |
| Has tests | ✓ | ✓ |
| Has CI | ✓ | ✓ |
| Test coverage | 21% | 100% |
| Dependency CVEs | No CVEs | No CVEs |
| Architecture grade | — | — |
| Cycles | — | — |
| Bottom-line | Healthy signals | Healthy signals |
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