If there won’t be too many different plugins, maybe having a feature for each plugin would work. Then you could use --features=... when compiling to select the plugins you need.

I like to look at Issues and Pull Requests on Github if a crate wasn’t updated for multiple years. If there are already problems like unsoundness, deprecation, or breaking bugs mentioned with no reaction shown by the maintainer, that is a good sign to look elsewhere instead. If everything seems fine and the crate isn’t very complex or security-critical, it is probably not an issue.

I’m using it and it does feel faster, but I haven’t done real benchmarks yet. But it’s easy enough to set up, so might as well try it out.

I haven’t heard anything newer yet, but I guess this takes them a bit of time to properly figure out. At the very least I got the impression that the Rust Project well aware of the issues this time.