Re: Integrating "safe" languages into OpenBSD? (2017)

Rust is good at preventing memory leaks. It doesn't matter (as much) for a command line utility that runs for one second then exits. Of course, there are now utilities written in Rust. https://github.com/samuela/rustybox

Re: Re: Integrating "safe" languages into OpenBSD? (2017)

#5

Post by empath75 » Sun, May 03, 2020, 3:27 PM UTC

All the core utils have been ported to rust for the redox project, and there are actually superior alternatives in some cases available like ripgrep.

Re: Re: Integrating "safe" languages into OpenBSD? (2017)

#6

Post by asveikau » Sun, May 03, 2020, 3:30 PM UTC

Marc.info seems not to be responding for me. Here is an archive.org link. https://web.archive.org/web/20190302233853/https://marc.info...

Re: Re: Integrating "safe" languages into OpenBSD? (2017)

#7

Post by Datenstrom » Sun, May 03, 2020, 3:31 PM UTC

A rewrite of core utils[1] was started in 2013.

    commit d4e96b33e343733992fad55ac840c9649cd72ede
    Author: Jordi Boggiano 
    Date:   Fri Aug 2 09:22:57 2013 -0700

        Initial commit

Although I hope that Redox[2] takes off more so than rust makes it into existing systems. I dream of one day ordering a System76 with Redox already installed.

[1]: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils.git

[2]: https://www.redox-os.org/

Re: Re: Integrating "safe" languages into OpenBSD? (2017)

#8

Post by jcranmer » Sun, May 03, 2020, 3:31 PM UTC

> I wasn't implying. I was stating a fact. There has been no attempt to move the smallest parts of the ecosystem, to provide replacements for base POSIX utilities.

This is in fact incorrect--there is a project aiming to build all of the coreutils in Rust (https://github.com/uutils/coreutils).

More to the point: while I do concur in the conclusion that Rust shouldn't be a part of the OpenBSD base system, the gatekeeping implied here (it's not a serious language because it's not used to build an operating system) is really toxic. Especially considering that the gate in question has already been thoroughly breached by the language in question (some universities have switched to using Rust in their OS courses, for example).

Re: Re: Integrating "safe" languages into OpenBSD? (2017)

#9

Post by simias » Sun, May 03, 2020, 3:32 PM UTC

ape4 wrote: post #4

Rust is good at preventing memory leaks. It doesn't matter (as much) for a command line utility that runs for one second then exits. Of course, there are now utilities written in Rust. https://github.com/samuela/rustybox

I think Theo's reply was a bit excessive in some regards but I can also understand him being frustrated when you've been working on a very complex project for decades and somebody comes around and say "uh, why don't you rewrite it in ?".

It's seldom a very interesting or constructive discussion. If you think Rust has something to bring to some project then you should at least take the time to write a decent proof of concept or something similar, not ask the current maintainers to rewrite their codebase in Rust/Go/Haskell/Prolog because of some purely theoretical benefits. You don't go to construction workers in the street and tell them that they should consider using different types of hammers.

Re: Re: Integrating "safe" languages into OpenBSD? (2017)

#10

Post by zdw » Sun, May 03, 2020, 3:33 PM UTC

As with most things Theo says, they're aligned with being the right answer for OpenBSD's niche, which is probably not your niche.

Any new tools that have high resource needs, don't support all the more exotic/esoteric platforms that it supports, are all nonstarters if your goal is a very small core system that compiles quickly on all supported platforms.