diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index ce00d57..60ed3d1 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Package: hellorust
 Type: Package
 Title: Minimal Examples of Using Rust Code in R
-Version: 1.2.0
+Version: 1.2.1
 Authors@R: c(person("Jeroen", "Ooms", role = c("aut", "cre"), email = "jeroen@berkeley.edu",
     comment = c(ORCID = "0000-0002-4035-0289")),
       person("Authors of the dependency Rust crates", role = "aut", comment = "see AUTHORS file"))
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 048918c..b14f019 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,3 +1,6 @@
+1.2.1
+ - Print rustc --version in configure as per CRAN request
+
 1.2.0
  - Windows: support aarch64-pc-windows-gnullvm
 
diff --git a/configure b/configure
index ccd552d..d29ec0d 100755
--- a/configure
+++ b/configure
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.cargo/bin"
 if [ $(command -v cargo) ]; then
   cargo --version
+  rustc --version || true
 else
   echo "----------------------- [RUST NOT FOUND]---------------------------"
   echo "The 'cargo' command was not found on the PATH. Please install rustc"