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Retiring from the Rust for Linux Project – Wedson Almeida Filho

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Re: Retiring from the Rust for Linux Project – Wedson Almeida Filho

#61

Post by laerus »

rc00 wrote: post #52
laerus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then raise these concerns and find a way to solve them together. Not dismiss a proven solution to real and even dangerous problems like memory unsafety. It's unreasonable for educated grown men to react like 12yo children and resist change cause "we don't like eating our vegetables even though they are good for our health". If you actually care about the Linux kernel you will find a way forward even if that mean…

This is a horrible comment, much like many of the others on this thread. The long-time contributors to the Linux kernel project have been doing so before there was any "prestige" or resume credentials attached. And if it was just about a resume, wouldn't they have moved on already? This is an ill-conceived take and just another example of some of the pro-Rust crowd being far too unknowledgeable to be upset.

You are not convincing me that these people care about the longevity of the project when they are so smug and ready dismiss anything that is not fitting their whatever agenta, even if that is a supposedly passion for contribution and development.

What you don't understand about what you call "pro-Rust crowd" is that there is a reason to push for memory safety and encoding the invariants in the type-system. It's the closer you can get to a mathematically proven system.

If you don't want one of your most core systems to be as robust as possible against security vulnerabilities, even if that means going out your way either learning something unfamiliar or god forbit communicating, like you have more emotional quality than a potato, with other people then you are a horrible person.

Re: Retiring from the Rust for Linux Project – Wedson Almeida Filho

#62

Post by sunshowers »

rwmj wrote: post #17
SirGiggles wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I'm mistaken, LWN suggests it's Ted Ts'o https://lwn.net/Articles/978738/

Ted's objection is perfectly reasonable, and the way that Linux works and has always worked internally. If an internal (not userspace) API changes then code that uses that API has to be fixed. He also quite reasonably says that it'll take time to understand the trade-offs of encoding constraints into the type system.

It's deeply ineffective engineering communication. Below a professional standard.

Re: Retiring from the Rust for Linux Project – Wedson Almeida Filho

#63

Post by Ericson2314 »

still_grokking wrote: post #53
Ericson2314 wrote: post #45

> I truly believe the future of kernels is with memory-safe languages. I am no visionary but if Linux doesn't internalize this, I'm afraid some other kernel will do to it what it did to Unix. This is why I want to work on multi-kernel NixOS — I want to make this threat as credible as possible. If ever new kennel requires one to switch to an entirely different user land arbitrarily, they're just imposing stupid switch…

Debian is already ported (in parts) to different kernels.

I believe that the GNU/kfreebsd stuff is unfortunately fairly abandoned? I am very interested in https://github.com/nixos-bsd/nixbsd and then Redox support and then maybe more in the line of https://github.com/nix-community/redoxpkgs afterwards.

Re: Retiring from the Rust for Linux Project – Wedson Almeida Filho

#64

Post by mlindner »

binary132 wrote: post #43
mlindner wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is the Linux kernel devs are refusing to explain the API and put it down in writing with clear documentation on what the contract is, and then they further gaslight and twist the situation with messaging like "you're trying to convince everyone to switch over to the religion as promulgated by Rust" (direct quote from a Kernel dev). Basically the worst of the worst behavior.

Have you considered trying to understand the perspectives of people in the C kernel dev camp? This seems awfully biased towards a hermeneutic of “C developer bad, Rust developer good”.

I'm a C developer. What I see from some in the C kernel dev camp is a refusal to participate, and further an active attempt to stonewall progress. The Rust devs have been highly accommodating in every possible way, but that's just not enough for them.

Re: Retiring from the Rust for Linux Project – Wedson Almeida Filho

#65

Post by simjnd »

pseudony wrote: post #39
simjnd wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have a minority who wants to impose a change, and the concerns outlined in that video by the audience member reflects genuine concerns from many other maintainers and contributors. What change exactly is being imposed? Rust has been accepted, so that parts of the kernel can be written in either Rust or C. Nobody is pushing for an entire kernel rewrite in Rust. Nobody is pushing out C maintainers. > The Rust min…

Theodore Ts'o, the person you are implying is not an engineer, started working on Linux in 1991. Just look at the MAINTAINERS file of the Linux kernel source tree. You'll find Theo maintaining several critical pieces, including leading the ext4 file system development, but really, take a look. Just to underline this. You are calling the credibility of a man whose code has most assuredly had a hand in storing your fil…

> Theodore Ts'o, the person you are implying is not an engineer

Wow slow down there. Where did I imply he wasn't?

I did imply he absolutely didn't act as one. When you're having an engineering discussion and you are being dismissive of actual arguments and reduce that to """religion""" you are not acting as one, you are acting like a fool.

> Would you labor under such uncertainty and creeping adoption for a year or two, raise the points ad nauseam, get no concrete answers and NOT, at some point, lose your patience ?

Whatever the circumstances, I'm not giving a pass to anyone to act like a complete dickhead. Whether that be to Theodore and other toxic kernel devs or to the toxic Rust community. If you lose patience just take a break, don't shit on other people. How is that a controversial take?

Re: Retiring from the Rust for Linux Project – Wedson Almeida Filho

#66

Post by hitekker »

computably wrote: post #32
noobermin wrote: post #26

[flagged]

A short resignation email on a mailing list is about as little drama as I can imagine for, well, resigning. Perhaps by "drama" you're referring to the linked video, but watching the clip, the only drama I see is accusations like "You're trying to convince everyone to switch over to the religion as promulgated by Rust." Regardless of the technical issues, that's an ad hominem with zero technical merit.

Yes, he was pushed over the edge. But what he said is not a lie.

Re: Retiring from the Rust for Linux Project – Wedson Almeida Filho

#67

Post by an_guy »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #51
binary132 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe. but is it really FALSE? anyway, the point of the resignation is not wanting to deal with all this, not necessarily taking a side, so I’m not even disagreeing with you. But obviously, it is a disagreeable atmosphere. I don’t find that debatable, even if that’s due to people feeling paranoid about a (nonexistent?) rust religious takeover. I think we can all admit Rust definitely has its ideologues and cult acoly…

Yes, it's really false. They weren't saying that maintainers couldn't change the API nor that the maintainers who changed the API had to update the Rust part, just that they needed to tell the Rust maintainers what they did and what they intended so that they could correctly encode their underlying assumptions in code. In other words, they simply requested adequate documentation and the response was "I'M NOT LEARNING…

> They weren't saying that maintainers couldn't change the API nor that the maintainers who changed the API had to update the Rust part

So maintainer would have to either wait for Rust team to update their API or learn Rust.

Seems like an unnecessary dependency.

Re: Retiring from the Rust for Linux Project – Wedson Almeida Filho

#68

Post by sunshowers »

an_guy wrote: post #67
entropicdrifter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's really false. They weren't saying that maintainers couldn't change the API nor that the maintainers who changed the API had to update the Rust part, just that they needed to tell the Rust maintainers what they did and what they intended so that they could correctly encode their underlying assumptions in code. In other words, they simply requested adequate documentation and the response was "I'M NOT LEARNING…

> They weren't saying that maintainers couldn't change the API nor that the maintainers who changed the API had to update the Rust part So maintainer would have to either wait for Rust team to update their API or learn Rust. Seems like an unnecessary dependency.

Yes, the burden on the C maintainers is low but not zero. In a shared project, other people matter too. If you don't like it you should just work on solo projects.

Re: Retiring from the Rust for Linux Project – Wedson Almeida Filho

#69

Post by masfoobar »

troad wrote: post #50
computably wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust's 1.0 was 2015. It's been 9 years. It's been adopted for core components in Firefox, and Chromium/Android are likewise moving towards adopting Rust. In general, Rust has seen broad industry adoption from the likes of FAANG, M$, etc. As far as I know, while alternatives like Zig may have their merits, they are simply nowhere close to Rust in terms of maturity and adoption. Not only would it take a decade for them…

> It's been adopted for core components in Firefox, and Chromium/Android are likewise moving towards adopting Rust. In general, Rust has seen broad industry adoption from the likes of FAANG, M$, etc. Rust has seen slight interest, but saying that companies like Microsoft are 'moving towards adopting Rust' is just flat out wrong (you realise MS make their own language stack, right? and that it's far more used than Rus…

> I quite like Rust, but these are early days, and it is not yet clear that Rust will be the language that wins this fight

There has been a number of languages in 20 years that have been given hype - some more than others... yet slowly disappear into the corner.

Ruby and Clojure are 2 examples in the last 13 years. Today, I rarely hear about them (though I am sure they could still be popular in certain places)

To me, Rust is different to these examples.. and more comparable to the sort of hype and popularity Java got back in the 90s. Point is Rust is not going away like these other examples... and the fact Microsoft has included Rust in their kernel (like Linux as and, I believe, BSD) tells you a lot.

Microsoft are likely to still push their stack (.NET, etc) for frontend development. However, for their low-level+high performance codebase, likely behind their azure infrastructure, I would not be surprised if they start going with Rust.

Personally, I would love to see languages like Odin and Zig be more popular but I think Rust is going to dominate many areas in programming. Does not mean Zig or Odin wont be successful, it just wont get that fanbase Rust has, imo. The question you have to ask (like Java) is -- is it really the best choice for its features... or by its push/popularity.

Re: Retiring from the Rust for Linux Project – Wedson Almeida Filho

#70

Post by timeon »

masfoobar wrote: post #6

I try to sit on the fence when it comes to Rust and the Linux kernel. On one end, is Rust the right choice to be included... over others such as Zig or (perhaps) Odin? Are we 10 years too soon to include a "safe language" ???? Then again, we have Linus Torvolds who, in the last 20 years, has been hell-bent against including C++ in the kernel despite backlash.. yet.. he has accepted Rust a year or so ago. He obviously…

Zig is not comparable to Rust in memory safety.
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