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Gitoxide: Pure Rust Implementation of Git

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Re: Gitoxide: Pure Rust Implementation of Git

#31

Post by Yoric »

ggrrhh_ta wrote: post #17
guerrilla wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine there are different motivations for different people. Some people may just want to use rust to re-implement something that exists in order to hone their skills or just for fun. Having a reference implementation makes that more productive. Other people may think that it would simply be better if the project were implemented in rust. This is the case for some C projects, where a lot of control is still necess…

> or me, rust is the first real competitor in the systems programming market. What about julia or go?

I don't know enough about Julia, but the definition of "systems" is different in Go vs. C/C++/Rust. Go is more of a Python, Ruby or Node competitor while Rust is more of a C, C++ or D competitor.

Doesn't mean that there is no overlap, but when you wish to go closer to the metal, picking Rust makes lots of sense.

Re: Gitoxide: Pure Rust Implementation of Git

#32

Post by dragonsh »

atoav wrote: post #3
linkdd wrote: post #2

Why do people feel the need to reimplement everything in Rust ? If it's not broken, don't fix it...

Because it is a interesting excercise to reimplement something great in a new interesting language you wanna test drive? Why are people writing new programming languages? After all we already have some. Sometimes you do it for fun and frivolity, sometimes because you think you can do better, sometimes because you are addressing real tangible issues with the old way of doing things and often a combination of the three…

Reimplementation relying on unsafe ‘C/C++’ code (as most of the core infrastructure is written in them) is done more for marketing especially among language aficionados.

Hope someone from Rust community can write something which can match some of the core software written in Go language, which has already proven its usefulness and quality in writing systems programs in networking and system infrastructure areas.

C/C++ replacement at this time is just a wishful thinking given Rust cannot work without C/C++ today, most useful crates will break if underlying C/C++ code is not maintained or updated.

Re: Gitoxide: Pure Rust Implementation of Git

#33

Post by anshdgTHa »

linkdd wrote: post #15
phoe-krk wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the security perspective, if it is written in C, then it is broken by default and by design - no exceptions. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24133128 for a recent, very relevant discussion on that topic with multiple examples and a good rationale.

I really don't understand the hate towards every language that is not Rust. Rust provide you tools to avoid many security issues. But that does not mean everything that hasn't been written in Rust is broken by default. You still have "unsafe" in Rust, so is it broken by default and design and we should throw away the language ? Obviously not!

Since the top subthread comment has been predictably flagged by the clique:

Rewriting is easier than doing original work. If you manage to get people to use "your" new Rust project, you get a huge payoff for comparatively little work with lots of plagiarizing.

Re: Gitoxide: Pure Rust Implementation of Git

#34

Post by atoav »

dragonsh wrote: post #32
atoav wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is a interesting excercise to reimplement something great in a new interesting language you wanna test drive? Why are people writing new programming languages? After all we already have some. Sometimes you do it for fun and frivolity, sometimes because you think you can do better, sometimes because you are addressing real tangible issues with the old way of doing things and often a combination of the three…

Reimplementation relying on unsafe ‘C/C++’ code (as most of the core infrastructure is written in them) is done more for marketing especially among language aficionados. Hope someone from Rust community can write something which can match some of the core software written in Go language, which has already proven its usefulness and quality in writing systems programs in networking and system infrastructure areas. C/C+…

> Reimplementation relying on unsafe ‘C/C++’ code (as most of the core infrastructure is written in them) is done more for marketing especially among language aficionados.

Let's read the page we are talking about to check your judgment:

"Project Goals: a pure-rust implementation of git including transport, object database, references, cli and tui"

and

"Non-Goals: replicate git command functionality perfectly"

Doesn't sound like they are relying on unsafe C/C++ code at all – and sounds like they are just doing it out of curiosity. Unless you mean that parts of the git infrastructure (beyond this project) use C/C++ and therefore as long as you don't rewrite everything at once, their effort remains meaningless, which would be quite a dire world view, so I am assuming you mean something different which I don't get atm.

Re: Gitoxide: Pure Rust Implementation of Git

#35

Post by oblio »

dragonsh wrote: post #28
EE84M3i wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you expect instead from "pure rust"?

Not sure what is meant by pure, probably another way of marketing to Rust aficionados. It uses crates which still rely on unsafe ‘C’ code to interact with operating system for interacting with files and file related OS calls. It will be nice instead of proclaiming Rust as “C” replacement it should have positioned as “A language complementing C/C++ to write safe code”. Recently Servo project is abandoned by Mozilla fo…

> Not sure what is meant by pure, probably another way of marketing to Rust aficionados.

"Pure" is not some Rust marketing ploy :-)

It's a pretty established term meaning "written only with". I've seen pure Python, pure PHP, pure JavaScript, etc libraries and apps.

It generally means you don't need another compiler to build or you don't need to know another language to contribute or fix things for yourself.

Re: Gitoxide: Pure Rust Implementation of Git

#36

Post by oblio »

anshdgTHa wrote: post #33
linkdd wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand the hate towards every language that is not Rust. Rust provide you tools to avoid many security issues. But that does not mean everything that hasn't been written in Rust is broken by default. You still have "unsafe" in Rust, so is it broken by default and design and we should throw away the language ? Obviously not!

Since the top subthread comment has been predictably flagged by the clique: Rewriting is easier than doing original work. If you manage to get people to use "your" new Rust project, you get a huge payoff for comparatively little work with lots of plagiarizing.

Someone should have told Linus to stop plagiarizing. Heck, someone should have told Stallman and GNU, too.

Your argument is quite flawed.

Re: Gitoxide: Pure Rust Implementation of Git

#38

Post by amelius »

linkdd wrote: post #15
phoe-krk wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the security perspective, if it is written in C, then it is broken by default and by design - no exceptions. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24133128 for a recent, very relevant discussion on that topic with multiple examples and a good rationale.

I really don't understand the hate towards every language that is not Rust. Rust provide you tools to avoid many security issues. But that does not mean everything that hasn't been written in Rust is broken by default. You still have "unsafe" in Rust, so is it broken by default and design and we should throw away the language ? Obviously not!

I think garbage collected languages like Haskell actually provide better security than Rust, because the code is not littered with constructs dealing with memory management.

The only reason to use Rust is if you need the performance. But often, that's only an issue in your "inner loops", so you could write the rest of your code in a more suitable language.

Since in most cases these performance critical parts are only small in terms of lines of code, and hence easily verifiable by hand, you could even write them in C and still not have security issues.

Therefore, I think Rust serves only a very specific need, and isn't nearly as universally "the right tool" as everyone seems to believe.

They do have a nice packaging system, though.

Re: Gitoxide: Pure Rust Implementation of Git

#39

Post by imtringued »

dragonsh wrote: post #28
EE84M3i wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you expect instead from "pure rust"?

Not sure what is meant by pure, probably another way of marketing to Rust aficionados. It uses crates which still rely on unsafe ‘C’ code to interact with operating system for interacting with files and file related OS calls. It will be nice instead of proclaiming Rust as “C” replacement it should have positioned as “A language complementing C/C++ to write safe code”. Recently Servo project is abandoned by Mozilla fo…

Here is a pie chart that shows which languages are used in firefox: https://4e6.github.io/firefox-lang-stats/

Re: Gitoxide: Pure Rust Implementation of Git

#40

Post by MaxBarraclough »

jayp1418 wrote: post #30
phoe-krk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Lisp programmer, I don't dunk on everything that is not Rust; I instead dunk on everything that is C. The extensive use of this language has brought us countless pain via stack overflows, buffer overflows, memory corruption, and multiple other vulnerabilities that are literally baked into the language model. Dropping C for any sane alternative will be a massive boon.

I think ada can be good contender for C replacement

I think Ada's future is in safety-critical systems, where it makes sense to invest heavily in correctness, with the option of using SPARK and formal verification. Additionally, Ada has several mature compilers suitable for life-and-death applications.

For more ordinary software though, doesn't Rust make more sense? Its approach to memory management for instance, with a borrower-checker, seems much nicer than what Ada has to offer.

Disclaimer: I know neither language very well.

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