Re: Integrating "safe" languages into OpenBSD? (2017) • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by staticassertion » Sun, May 03, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

This is less "On Rust" and more "On accepting a rewrite of any tool into OpenBSD, on the merits of memory safety alone".

There isn't really much of a statement or judgment on Rust. At most there's an interesting point on it's value proposition:

> However there is a rampant fiction that if you supply a new safer method everyone will use it. For gods sake, the simplest of concepts like the stack protector took nearly 10 years for adoption, let people should switch languages? DELUSION.

This is mostly true. Developers in particular don't generally care about security, so selling Rust as a "secure" language is not going to be enough. I've said this since 1.0. But it's not entirely true for products, which often drive development - Chrome's pairing of performance and security led to tons of marketing wins.

Given that tools like "cat" etc are:

a) Not generally security sensitive

b) Target developers

I don't see anyone choosing the "rust cat" over the builtin. This is why people build tools like "bat", that aren't just memory safe copies, but they're memory safe tools that add features and target slightly different cases.

Not much else to get from this post, I think.

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

#62

Post by Koshkin » Sun, May 03, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

Hm. Rust needs more than 4GB to compile itself?

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

#63

Post by ashtonkem » Sun, May 03, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

Datenstrom wrote: post #7

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/

I was going to say, all this discussion of whether you can make OS utilities in rust seems to be ignoring the entire OS that’s actually being written in rust!

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

#64

Post by Mordak » Sun, May 03, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

dochtman wrote: post #15

Perhaps relevant: Ted Unangst recently wrote some Rust code: https://flak.tedunangst.com/post/reliverator

There are actually several of the OpenBSD devs that have been writing Rust lately. Some are doing it for work, some from personal interest. Opinions vary on how much people like it.

Rust and OpenBSD share a lot of technical values though so maybe this isn't surprising. Rust values safety and correctness. OpenBSD values safety and correctness. Rust values 'Just Works' with all the nice things cargo does and the whole 'fearless refactoring / concurrency' thing. OpenBSD values 'Just Works' with sane defaults and the 'batteries included' base system.

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

#65

Post by Rusky » Sun, May 03, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

dirtydroog wrote: post #24

jcranmer wrote: post #8

> 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 gatekee…

Is it 'really toxic', or just uninformed? Note that the email conversation was from a few years ago.

Arguably, someone in that position speaking so definitively while also being uninformed, is at least a little "toxic."

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

#66

Post by krick » Sun, May 03, 2020, 4:12 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.

Huh? Some days all I see on HN fron page is "X written in Rust" projects, where X is some long existing tool (now with colorized output by default!)

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

#67

Post by allp10 » Sun, May 03, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #53

dirtydroog wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it 'really toxic', or just uninformed? Note that the email conversation was from a few years ago.

I'd say toxic. When you point out that "nobody has done this" in this way, there is a strong implication that it's not possible, not reasonable, or not wort the effort. Rust explicitly aims to be a systems language. It explicitly challenges C and C++ on their own turf. Implying that it's not suitable for serious systems work is insulting. > Note that the email conversation was from a few years ago. Remember that the…

Rust good, C bad.

Rust good, C bad. Rust good, C bad.

Rust good, C bad.

Rust good, C bad. Rust good, C bad.

Rust good, C bad.

Rust good, C bad. Rust good, C bad.

Rust good, C bad.

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

#68

Post by notaplumber » Sun, May 03, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

cycloptic wrote: post #59

jcranmer wrote: post #8

> 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 gatekee…

There is no gatekeeping. To actually achieve POSIX-compliance is not an easy task and requires lots of testing. If you don't do it then your replacement will break everyone's scripts. A distro maintainer will also want to retain compatibility with their supported GNU/BSD extensions so that's more work to add on. I would still agree with his statement at least as far as BSD is concerned. Outside of Redox I haven't see…

> Is this really appropriate for a core system component to have this many dependencies?

Absolutely not. The entire OpenBSD base system can be built without an internet connection.

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

#69

Post by hvs » Sun, May 03, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #61

This is less "On Rust" and more "On accepting a rewrite of any tool into OpenBSD, on the merits of memory safety alone". There isn't really much of a statement or judgment on Rust. At most there's an interesting point on it's value proposition: > However there is a rampant fiction that if you supply a new safer method everyone will use it. For gods sake, the simplest of concepts like the stack protector took nearly 1…

This is pretty much a judgment of Rust:

  Such ecosystems come with incredible costs.  For instance,
  rust cannot even compile itself on i386 at present time
  because it exhausts the address space.

  Consider me a skeptic -- I think these compiler ecosystems
  face a grim bloaty future.

I would think that OpenBSD developers/users would care about security, since that's pretty much the value-proposition of OpenBSD.

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

#70

Post by fluffything » Sun, May 03, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #61

This is less "On Rust" and more "On accepting a rewrite of any tool into OpenBSD, on the merits of memory safety alone". There isn't really much of a statement or judgment on Rust. At most there's an interesting point on it's value proposition: > However there is a rampant fiction that if you supply a new safer method everyone will use it. For gods sake, the simplest of concepts like the stack protector took nearly 1…

> Developers in particular don't generally care about security,

Bad developers don't, but many developers do. The Rust project itself has hundreds of contributors, to the point that it feels that it has more contributors than LLVM itself (I work on both, and this is an unbacked feeling I get from the velocity of the contributions).

Point being, if developers wouldn't care about Rust, they wouldn't be developing it.