This looks to be quite the doozy to start off with creating a SlackBuild... SlackBuilds that are submitted to SBo are not able to download any files while running (everything needs to be able to be run offline). By default, cargo will download all the required dependencies when you try and run it, which means you wouldn't be able to submit it to SBo (but you could still use it to build the package). If you want an example SlackBuild that deals with the extra dependencies on SBo, look at dust.

I, and probably other forum members would be happy to provide guidance on getting the SlackBuild squared away, but it may take a lot of work.

Another possible option is on the i3status-rust README on their github to just install it to your local directory by running:

I dont understand what you are saying here. Every SlackBuild needs to download at least the sources for building.

The SlackBuild itself doesn't download that source (there are no wget, git clone, or similar commands in SlackBuilds hosted on SBo). The source file(s) needs to already be present in the same directory as the SlackBuild when the SlackBuild is ran.

Most (probably all) programs that work with SBo will download the source files needed by using the $PRGNAM.info file and those files will be downloaded before the SlackBuild itself is run.

I like to test an older package version of Samba, but it seems they get deleted as the patches dir does not contain any old packages:
https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackw...rrent/patches/

Is there a source for the older txz packages?

I even tried it through Archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170216...slackware64/n/

But as expected, old packages are not available anymore:
https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackw...5-x86_64-1.txt

Are there any "historical" mirrors available?

EDIT: Ok, found the "cumulative" mirror by myself
https://slackware.uk/cumulative/slac...t/slackware64/