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Integrating “safe” languages into OpenBSD?

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Re: Integrating “safe” languages into OpenBSD?

#61

Post by jackmott »

akerro wrote: post #12
xwvvvvwx wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but there is a pretty serious effort to rewrite all the gnu coreutils in Rust: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils

>Such ecosystems come with incredible costs. For instance, rust cannot >even compile itself on i386 at present time because it exhausts the >address space. Is cargo supported on i386 platforms? Also Rust complies itself, afaik there is no way to compile Rust/Cargo but to use previous version of it. If one of the past builds of Rust is backdoored, any version between then and now is backdoored, language is safe, envir…

It seems like a barrier for Rust in many of the low level places people would like to see it, is the inability to target all platforms. An official C backend would seem to solve that problem.

The other barrier is compile times, which seems to be a major challenge.

Re: Integrating “safe” languages into OpenBSD?

#62

Post by DCKing »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #7

> So rather than bothering to begin, you wrote an email. This is where Theo appears to me to be quite different to eg Linus. He plays the man, not the ball, with personal attacks.

Come on man. This is such low effort appealing to Theo's public image. If this is something you feel you must describe as a personal attack, it must be hard to get around in life.

I find this response quite level headed and I like that some of his responses make it to the front page that provide insights into why such language changes are more difficult than they seem.

Re: Integrating “safe” languages into OpenBSD?

#63

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #42
ams6110 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the attack there? It's a statement of fact.

If I say "You have a big nose, it makes you ugly" as the first line in my email, it may well be a "statement of fact" and yet still be a personal attack. Your implication that a statement of fact cannot be a personal attack is untrue. Whether the OP has or has not written Posix utilities in rust is of no relevance to the actual argument whatsoever, it is just a way to have a dig at the OP.

The second part of your example is a statement of opinion, not fact -- so it's not really the same thing at all.

Re: Integrating “safe” languages into OpenBSD?

#64

Post by Annatar »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #36
2trill2spill wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems like a bit of a trite point unless many rust developers are actually working inside i386. Though the compiler itself might not work very well in i386. Trite point? OpenBSD supports 1386[1] if they pull a rust compiler into base and start rewriting things in rust, then they can't support 1386. Dropping a supported platform is not a "trite point". [1]: https://www.openbsd.org/plat.html

At this point i386 is legacy for most of the world. OpenBSD is an ultra-conservative, orthodox project, therefore they will probably support i386 for years into the future - I mean, they supported VAX until 2016. That is a choice they are entitled to make, the trade-off being it would appear to make most modern technologies a poor fit for adoption in OpenBSD - that's the price they have to pay. It is a problem of the…

OpenBSD is an ultra-conservative, orthodox project,

...which is exactly the kind of a system one needs for production environments.

Re: Integrating “safe” languages into OpenBSD?

#65

Post by q3k »

IshKebab wrote: post #6
xwvvvvwx wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but there is a pretty serious effort to rewrite all the gnu coreutils in Rust: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils

And Go: https://github.com/ericlagergren/go-coreutils Does he really not know this or is he ignoring them to make a point?

This doesn't seem to be more than a toy project [1]. Not to mention, it's GPL-licensed, so it's basically useless for OpenBSD [2].

[1] - https://github.com/ericlagergren/go-coreutils/blob/master/xx...

[2] - https://www.openbsd.org/policy.html C-f GPL

Re: Integrating “safe” languages into OpenBSD?

#66

Post by raimue »

masklinn wrote: post #43
raimue wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenBSD supports a wide variety of hardware platforms, including machines with Alpha, PA-RISC, and SPARC64 processors. On each of them, the base system is able to compile itself. If rustc cannot even build itself on i386, what kind of support can we expect for other platforms with an even smaller user base? On a project such as OpenBSD they cannot suddenly drop platforms and only support amd64 as portability is one o…

> On a project such as OpenBSD they cannot suddenly drop platforms and only support amd64 as portability They… don't need to? That rustc can't compile itself on i386 doesn't mean you can't ship a rustc for i386, it just means you have to cross-compile it.

I see it as part of portability that you do not need to use any external system for bootstrapping.

Imagine as a developer who compiles base from source you had to find another system only to compile rustc and then transfer it to your machine. And you would not have to do this only once, but for every compiler bug fix coupled with the overall rapid evolution of Rust. I think many in the OpenBSD community would oppose such an approach, even without further considering other aspects such as security implications.

Re: Integrating “safe” languages into OpenBSD?

#67

Post by octo_t »

jackpot51 wrote: post #4

Theo is completely ignorant here. I also saw him spout similar inaccuracies in this video: https://youtu.be/fYgG0ds2_UQ?t=2112 Uutils and Redox are setting out to provide POSIX compatible coreutils, and Redox builds from scratch in less than 30 minutes.

Something that is 'setting out' to provide something, doesn't seem like it is production ready enough to run a production operating system on top of.

Re: Integrating “safe” languages into OpenBSD?

#68

Post by geggam »

fsloth wrote: post #44

A bit incendiary: I fail to see what advantage rewriting existing and proven tools with a new language would bring. Shouldn't the main value new tools bring to be enable writing of new things? Isn't focusing on existing utils more like a lack of imagination and OCD on optimizing a thing beyond any further value?

Made me chuckle to think of writing systemd in rust

Re: Integrating “safe” languages into OpenBSD?

#69

Post by rtpg »

2trill2spill wrote: post #20
rtpg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a bit of a trite point unless many rust developers are actually working inside i386. Though the compiler itself might not work very well in i386. Not many people are whining about our C compiler toolchains not fitting into our microcontrollers.

> This seems like a bit of a trite point unless many rust developers are actually working inside i386. Though the compiler itself might not work very well in i386. Trite point? OpenBSD supports 1386[1] if they pull a rust compiler into base and start rewriting things in rust, then they can't support 1386. Dropping a supported platform is not a "trite point". [1]: https://www.openbsd.org/plat.html

So... my main point was that "I have to cross-compile the rust compiler from another arch" is not equivalent to "rustc is not usable in i386". And even if rustc wasn't usable in i386, the binary it produces would be.

So you could have a scenario where the i386 binaries would have to be cross compiled from a 64-bit machine but the end result would work just fine on those machines.

I wasn't aware that OpenBSD's objectives included having each arch be able to build itself. Totally reasonable goal. It's harder to do "dreamcast port"s in those scenarios, though.

Re: Integrating “safe” languages into OpenBSD?

#70

Post by vbernat »

IshKebab wrote: post #6
xwvvvvwx wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but there is a pretty serious effort to rewrite all the gnu coreutils in Rust: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils

And Go: https://github.com/ericlagergren/go-coreutils Does he really not know this or is he ignoring them to make a point?

This project is very incomplete (most commands are not implemented) and didn't get a commit since almost 6 months.
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