I think I just ran into this issue about a week ago. I started working on a task manager written in Rust using the Cursive library, which provides like an ncurses TUI. Heavy use of callbacks, but all callbacks require a <'static> lifetime. All the structures I make for information on the database of course don't have <'static> lifetimes. I eventually figured out that cursive has a function where you can kind of give it the data, but to pull the data back out requires a lot of cloning and boiler plate code.
Tip for you: when the compiler says you need a 'static lifetime, it's actually trying to say that all temporary references are forbidden and won't work. Arc is a reference, but isn't temporary. Add a mutex or atomic when you need to modify data behind arc.
This is the "interior mutability" approach that the article mentions.
I definitely think the error could be improved but I'm not sure it should really say "just shove it in an `Arc<Mutex>`," because that really is only sometimes the right solution and it might lead people to make poor choices by default.
I think a lot of the problem is really with the confusingness of the concept of static lifetime in rust to begin with, where it's kinda used for both "lives forever" and "doesn't reference anything that lives longer than it"[1]. I hope someday these meanings get different names, tbh.
But when you see that error the naive thought is like... "ok better make it live forever" but it really just means you need to make it something that you control, and there are other ways to do that than a refcounting mutex.
