GCC Rust Approved by GCC Steering Committee • Hacker News Board

Re: GCC Rust Approved by GCC Steering Committee

#181

Post by mistrial9 » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 8:58 PM UTC

cmurf wrote: post #174

Beltalowda wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right to repair has been all over the news, including mainstream news, and least in tech circles it's fairly well known. And while there are undoubtable many people who don't know what it means, the basic idea is quite obvious from just those three words: "if I bought something, I should have the ability to repair it". The problem is that merely right to repair doesn't cover all of Free Software so it will never catc…

Do many/most people really think they should have the ability to repair it? I'm not sure because they keep buying products where it's expressly not possible to repair it yourself or by a competent 3rd party. So I'm not really sure it has any more meaning than free software means no cost rather than "no one and everyone owns the software".

this question is exactly why I suggested we revisit that terminology in this thread!

Re: GCC Rust Approved by GCC Steering Committee

#182

Post by mistrial9 » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

Halan wrote: post #170

mistrial9 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> free software it seems like this term is misunderstood in English to mean "no money" .. perhaps "Libre Software" is a better starting description here

Maybe for Americans who cannot see further then their noses or that don’t speak any other language

American companies funded by leveraged debt are specifically, exactly paying that money in large amounts to remove any GPL'ish things in their stack. Some other hardware companies are simply failing to comply by the license - catch me if you can, I guess. If so much money is available as "someone else's money" and there is some vague notion that ownership complete is the mission of profit-seeking .. then why not? but what does that do to the value of the work, and the value of the ecosystem, built as GPL?

GCC is an engineering marvel, and the basis of two generations of engineering by hundreds of people and companies. Rust joining one of the many languages supported by GCC and stack, is welcome here.

Re: GCC Rust Approved by GCC Steering Committee

#183

Post by smolder » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

faisal_ksa wrote: post #98

What is the benefit of having multiple compilers for programming languages? Is there a scenario where a GCC compiled rust program would do something that an LLVM one can't do? Doesn't this cause fragmentation in the rust ecosystem? P.S.:I understand that people can work on any project they want. And I don't have the right to tell them not to. I'm just curious about the technical reasons for having multiple compilers.

In addition to what others have said, since there is a plan to introduce Rust kernel modules into the Linux kernel, being able to compile with GCC helps avoid dependence on another toolchain, which was something I've seen mentioned as a concern w.r.t. Rust in the kernel.

Re: GCC Rust Approved by GCC Steering Committee

#184

Post by cozzyd » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 9:08 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #166

cozzyd wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vendor sometimes does this and GCC is much more standard in the embedded space. And crucially, it's required to be open source. For example, for arm-none-eabi, ARM provides a GCC toolchain ( https://developer.arm.com/Tools%20and%20Software/GNU%20Toolc... ) but makes you purchase the LLVM-based one ( https://developer.arm.com/Tools%20and%20Software/Arm%20Compi... ). Now I'm fairly certain there's an open-source wa…

That's so strange. Rustup does ship with support for baremetal EABI ARM: $ rustup target list | grep arm | grep none armebv7r-none-eabi armebv7r-none-eabihf armv7a-none-eabi armv7r-none-eabi armv7r-none-eabihf ... which means the publicly-available open source version of LLVM also supports it.

Sure I bet it does, otherwise Rust wouldn't work on perhaps the most common microcontroller target, and I know it does. I don't know if there are secret sauce bits ARM adds to their version, or if there are differences in hardware support or anything like that. (I use gcc on these targets...have never looked into using Clang/LLVM on them).

edit: looking into this more, yes, upstream clang/llvm should work, though it doesn't include a C stdlib for this target (of little import to Rust, presumably), so you'll have to find one (e.g. by taking it from the GNU toolchain) if you want to use a C stdlib on embedded. Who knows what secret sauce armclang adds to clang...

Re: GCC Rust Approved by GCC Steering Committee

#185

Post by avgcorrection » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

faisal_ksa wrote: post #98

What is the benefit of having multiple compilers for programming languages? Is there a scenario where a GCC compiled rust program would do something that an LLVM one can't do? Doesn't this cause fragmentation in the rust ecosystem? P.S.:I understand that people can work on any project they want. And I don't have the right to tell them not to. I'm just curious about the technical reasons for having multiple compilers.

Having to nominal competitors makes everything good. Like Pepsi/Coke, Republicans/Democrats.

Re: GCC Rust Approved by GCC Steering Committee

#186

Post by coldtea » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 9:15 PM UTC

Beltalowda wrote: post #151

rascul wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term has been around for decades now, and seems to be fairly well understood in the tech world. It doesn't take much to say "free as in speech, not beer" to the few people left who need to understand it.

I'm not so sure about that; I've certainly met plenty of people who did not understand it. HN is not representative of the wider tech community. And "free as in speech, not beer" actually does little to clarify it IMHO; it only works well if you're already familiar with the concept, but if you're not it only adds to the confusion (free speech is about the freedom to say what you want, so free software is about being…

>I'm not so sure about that; I've certainly met plenty of people who did not understand it. HN is not representative of the wider tech community.

Well, people understand it just fine.

It's just that the definitive allure of FOSS is not what the purists think it is.

purist: FOSS is about freedom (to work on the source, release changs as FOSS, etc)

real world: what I care about is 70% the code being available to use for free and 30% the ability for others (and me in some cases) to edit it and release my changes. Yeah, I do understand it's not the same as mere "freeware". But for most intents and purposes that the part I care most about, but I also like the FOSS aspect because it means I can get more community stuff for it, and I don't depend on a single vendor releasing it.

Re: GCC Rust Approved by GCC Steering Committee

#187

Post by coldtea » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

Beltalowda wrote: post #163

atonse wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are probably even fewer people that know what right to repair is. Free software just isn’t enough anymore because the licenses limit your freedom too. (and even my choice of the word “limit” here will be controversial between the Apache/MIT and the *GPL crowds). Don’t have an easy answer :-)

Right to repair has been all over the news, including mainstream news, and least in tech circles it's fairly well known. And while there are undoubtable many people who don't know what it means, the basic idea is quite obvious from just those three words: "if I bought something, I should have the ability to repair it". The problem is that merely right to repair doesn't cover all of Free Software so it will never catc…

>Right to repair has been all over the news, including mainstream news, and least in tech circles

Has been in the kind of news Joe Average doesn't give a fuck about and even if they watch, they forget in 10 minutes.

Techies spot mentions of it in the news because they already care for it and know the term.

That's not the same as something being in the news that reach regular people (that would be more like some high profile Hollywood divorse, some war, or gas prices).

Re: GCC Rust Approved by GCC Steering Committee

#188

Post by coldtea » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 9:22 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #75

rascul wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term has been around for decades now, and seems to be fairly well understood in the tech world. It doesn't take much to say "free as in speech, not beer" to the few people left who need to understand it.

> free as in speech, not beer I can never remember which way around this is. I think the "beer" is supposed to be free in the monetary sense and "speech" is supposed to be free in the rights/liberty sense, but the analogy doesn't actually convey this: - Speech is normally both monetarily free and (in certain places) a right - Beer is normally neither monetarily free or a right. But may make you "feel" free, which is…

Probably you're overthinking it...

"free as in speech, not beer":

"free speech", the right to say what you want without legal restrictions from the state

"free beer", beer you don't need to pay for

Nothing to do with beer making you "feel free" (?) or whatever

Then again, free speech is not about being able to modify speech, release your own version of another's speech, and so on (e.g. the US has "free speech" but MLK's dream speech is still copyrighted).

Perhaps a better slogan would be:

"Free as in free sex, not beer"

And if the slogan wasn't meant for corporations too, and wasn't coined in the puritan 80s/90s, it might have been...

Re: GCC Rust Approved by GCC Steering Committee

#189

Post by Beltalowda » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 9:26 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #187

Beltalowda wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right to repair has been all over the news, including mainstream news, and least in tech circles it's fairly well known. And while there are undoubtable many people who don't know what it means, the basic idea is quite obvious from just those three words: "if I bought something, I should have the ability to repair it". The problem is that merely right to repair doesn't cover all of Free Software so it will never catc…

> Right to repair has been all over the news, including mainstream news, and least in tech circles Has been in the kind of news Joe Average doesn't give a fuck about and even if they watch, they forget in 10 minutes. Techies spot mentions of it in the news because they already care for it and know the term. That's not the same as something being in the news that reach regular people (that would be more like some high…

Such hostile contempt... Lots of things to concern yourself about and not everyone is interested in everything which is fine, but it's gotten quite a bit of coverage and certainly a lot more people know about it, never mind laws are being discussed and actually passed. More importantly, explaining the concept is just a lot easier because it's significantly less abstract.

Re: GCC Rust Approved by GCC Steering Committee

#190

Post by adastra22 » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 9:29 PM UTC

mistrial9 wrote: post #53

dleslie wrote: post #8

This is great! Gcc support opens up more platforms, more targets, and the opportunity to more easily integrate with the various common embedded toolchains that are built around gcc. And it's free software, for those that care, this matters.

> free software it seems like this term is misunderstood in English to mean "no money" .. perhaps "Libre Software" is a better starting description here

"Libre" is not a word in the English language. Pretty sure that's not going to be clearer.