Pre-RFC: Deprecation and separation of the dead_code lint
Rust Internals [Unofficial]
March 4, 2026
I want to add that "dead code" is a common industry term that e.g. also finds its way into coding standards. "rustc can detect dead code by itself accurately" is a pretty big selling point and the feature having that name is really useful.
I also don't think it should be deprecated.
Discussion in the ATmosphere