Linux people doing Linux things, it seems.
Adding rust to a massive mature C project that targets lots of architectures and has many contributors is a difficult process. If it succeeds it is going to take a lot more time and patience.
Especially when Rust has limited support for less common architectures. This has been forcing distros like gentoo to drop support for more niche arches since many common packages like python-cryptography are now pulling in rust as a mandatory dep.
One detail about Rust in the kernel that often gets overlooked: the Linux kernel supports arches to which Rust has never been ported. Most of these are marginal (hppa, alpha, m68k—itanium was also on this list), but there are people out there who still use them and may be concerned about their future. As long as Rust remains in device drivers only this isn’t a major issue, but if it penetrates further into the kernel, these arches will have to be desupported.
(Gentoo has a special profile “feature” called “wd40” for these arches, which is how I was aware of their lack of Rust support. It’s interesting to look at the number and types of packages it masks. Lotta python there, and it looks like gnome is effectively a no-go.)
It seems like gcc rust would pretty much fix that issue, since soon gcc will be able to compile rust for any architecture gcc supports.
Assuming that it works out, yes, this might fix the problem. On the other hand, I remember gcj, which kind of quietly vanished after a while, so I prefer to reserve judgement until gcc’s Rust implementation is ready for production use.
wd40
We are all such dorks.
You say that as though it’s a bad thing. 😆
The gccrust and rustc frontend for gcc projects aim to address that.
Or wait for rust to support the extra languages. With LLVM adding new architectures or projects like gccrs. But all of these options are a way out and rust will remain device driver only for a long time I suspect - it is still experimental after all. I would hope that as rust in the kernel matures so do the available architectures that rust supports.
Here’s the thing: you’re not going to force all of us to learn Rust.
That’s precious coming from Linux developers.
I am a heavy Linux user. I run multiple microservices on multiple headless devices all Linux.
This sounds like every fucking Windows user you’ll ever encounter.
“Here’s the thing: you’re not going to force all of us to learn to use Linux.”
So, yeah…
I finally watched the talk today and that wasn’t what I thought he meant. What I thought he was getting at was that the rust parts of the kernel interact with lots of other modules written by people who don’t know rust. When those C modules change their semantics in ways that break the rust code, they can’t go fix it because they don’t know rust. In fact, whenever they make a change, they don’t even know if they broke some rust module, because they don’t understand the rust code well enough. And this is something that everyone is going to have to live with for the foreseeable future, because you can’t force all those other kernel hackers to learn rust.
If you are that good in C(pp), I guess understanding rust code of a module is not sooo hard… I mean, I learned what I know about C from reading stuff in the Kernel that made my embedded Linux project not working.
But I have yet to read rust.
It’s a whole different ballgame. I’ve written a good amount of C and C++ in my day. I’ve been learning Rust for a year or so now. Switching between allocating your own memory and managing it, and the concept of “Ownership” https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch04-01-what-is-ownership.html is just something many devs set in their ways aren’t willing to do.
I understand where they’re coming from, I’ve gone through massive refactors with new tech in my career. I think this approach needs to be more methodical and cautious than it is, but I don’t think they are correct in the end result. I think a memory-safe language is the way to go, and it needs to happen.
This to me is a classic software project with no manager and a bunch of devs arguing internally with no clear external goals. There needs to be definitive goals set over a timeline. If someone doesn’t agree after a consensus is reached they can leave the project. But as of now I think as others have said this is 80% infighting, 20% actual work that’s happening.
It’s just their ego showing through.
It basically now comes down to the current devs depending on new Rust devs for anything that interacts with Rust code.
They could just work together with Rust devs to solve any issues (API for example).
But their ego doesn’t allow for it. They want to do everything by themselves because that’s how it always was (up until now).
Sure, you could say it’s more efficient to work on things alone for some people, and I’d agree here, but realistically that’s not going to matter because the most interactivity that exists (at the moment) between Rust and C in Linux is… the API. Something that they touch up on once in a while. Once it’s solid enough, they don’t have to touch it anymore at all.
This is a completely new challenge that the Linux devs are facing now after a new language has been introduced. It was tried before, but now it’s been approved. The only person they should be mad at is Linus, not the Rust devs.
Switching everything from C to Rust because it has better memory safety is more akin to changing languages from English to Esperanto because it has gender neutral pronouns and other cool features. Maybe it’s a good idea, but it’s understandable that some people are reluctant.
Maybe it’s a good idea, but it’s understandable that some people are reluctant.
I understand that position. I also understand how the words and phrases that the C community has used to communicate with the Rust community seems to be completely dismissive, not just reluctant.
I quoted what I did explicitly because of how a statement like that comes off to the person it’s aimed at. It doesn’t make them feel like they’re on an even footing working on the same project with the overall goal of it becoming better.
memory safety is more akin to changing languages from English to Esperanto because it has gender neutral pronouns.
I mean… not at all? Memory safety is huge for cybersecurity, buffer overflows and the like are common attack surfaces. C requires you to have deep knowledge of safe memory management practices and even then you can end up with memory issues. Rust was developed to avoid such issues entirely. I understand the reluctance but it feels to me like arguing “we should just stick with COBOL because it works.”
Gender neutral pronouns are pretty huge too. Sure you can do them in English without too many problems usually, just as it’s also possible to code safely in C. It requires everyone to change their old habits, but it’s much less of a change than is involved in adopting a whole new language.
Anyway, I do like Rust better personally.
I would still say that getting people to the point where they can write safe C code every time is harder than learning Rust, as it’s equivalent to being able to write rust code that compiles without any safety issues (compiler errors) every single time, which is very difficult to do.
Don’t thinknits possible by on write safe c code. Otherwise we would not have these issues time and time again. But yes its only the idiots begin don’t know how to code. Projects are big and complicated itsneasy to make mistakes.
Gender neutral pronouns might be pretty huge too, but nobody’s private data is getting hacked because of gendered pronoun use.
Ok, that made your analogy make more sense to me. I can agree with that. Thanks.
People prefer what’s familiar to them. Rust is completely foreign to them, the syntax is very different, the community is different (and often much younger), it still has many issues and is not ubiquitous, and many people are just slow/averse to change in general. So I absolutely understand the hesitation. And some just don’t like it for other reasons like the syntax, learning curve or other reasons. There’s also still a host of memory-related things Rust doesn’t fix like stack overflows, leaks, bitflips, unsafe context code, and just bad coding practices in general.
I blame C++. When these kernel hackers hear about how they should switch to this shiny new language that’s going to make their code so much cleanser and more manageable, I don’t blame them for thinking it’s all bullshit. It was last time.
