Release 0.14.0

[str4d]

This is a feature branch; PR is open to track the overall 0.14.0 changes.

[str4d]

This change is blocked on being included in a zkcrypto RFC.

[str4d]

CI is failing because changes in main currently conflict with changes here. I will fix this by merging main into this PR after #131 is merged.

[baloo]

I'm not very familiar with the zkcrypto processes, any chance you could tag and publish a pre-release for 0.14.0? (with #127 preferably).

[str4d]

That's my plan. We do not normally do pre-releases because they are hard to use correctly in general, but given the need to coordinate with RustCrypto I'll be doing so in this instance.

And as noted elsewhere, the trait changes in any pre-release builds will not be included in the final release unless they are also in a merged zkcrypto RFC. The pre-release builds we create in this instance should be used for RFC consensus building.

[str4d]

RustCrypto have decided to skip rand_core 0.9 entirely, and moved to 0.10.0-rc* in the last few weeks. There's very little motivation for me now in releasing ff 0.14 with rand_core 0.9, because it would be nigh-unusable in concrete downstreams like bls12_381 and pasta_curves which depend on various RustCrypto trait crates. So I will review #147 (and the equivalent PRs on group etc.) for an ff 0.14.0-pre.1.

This has two main implications:

• ff 0.14 will have an MSRV bump to whatever rand_core 0.10 uses (currently 1.85, which seems reasonable as that's the Rust 2024 edition boundary).
• ff 0.14 will be blocked until rand_core 0.10 releases, which currently has no date. (Thus far we've been blocked on a zkcrypto RFC being written but also waiting for RustCrypto to get close to needing a published ff 0.14 to ensure we're compatible; useful in this particular instance!)