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Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

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Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#581

Post by dijksterhuis »

josefx wrote: post #333
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides the current drama, I'm glad someone of his stature agrees with and can call out the horrible processes and tooling involved in the kernel. Using email and a pile of hacks to mess around with patches just sounds nuts and makes it so much harder to understand or contribute. I don't think decentralized necessitates such a terrible workflow - you can run a local website with a distributed DB, distributed git forg…

Afaik Linus tried Github in the past, but had several significant complaints about it hiding information, messing with basic git operations, generating bad commit messages, etc. . So it is not as if they wouldn't use something better, there just isn't anything that has feature parity with a workflow they have been optimizing for decades.

> a workflow they have been optimizing for decades

obligatory reminder about breaking someone's workflow https://xkcd.com/1172/

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#582

Post by lazyasciiart »

arp242 wrote: post #218
nubinetwork wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I never submitted a patch personally, I had once conferred with some of the input devs to add a trackpad to the synaptics driver... they were queueing up an update to add other trackpads, and they said they would add mine... 5 years later, it's still not there. It was just a one-liner, and I'm not really sure why it never got added... On the other hand, I once ran into an issue with uboot where a bad update kno…

People forget things etc. Should probably have just asked again, or sent a small one-line patch. It's "mention something on Slack" vs "creating a GitHub issue/PR"

Then you get stories like Greg in the linked mail thread, who emailed to check after not hearing anything and got told that now he'd been annoying and it would never be done.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#583

Post by Aeolun »

mu53 wrote: post #246
mort96 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say that C is "here to stay" in Linux? I would say so. I think you understood what was meant.

The drama is the problem, not rust. I don't know why, but either zealots choose rust or rust induces zealotry. Its exactly what Linus said.

Of perfectly moderate Rust users get annoyed with C zealots?

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#584

Post by scj »

PedroBatista wrote: post #94
threatofrain wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps C is here to stay and that is the way Linux should live and naturally die. That's what's being proposed here by the guy who opposes multi-language projects.

That's my overall point of view too. Regardless of infinite technical discussions about one or another, if Alice and Bob can't live together than just don't get married. Why spend all this energy on conflict and drama to no end? If one language/technology/group is so much better then just fork the thing and follow their own path. I'm actually not defending the C guys, I just want to leave them alone and let "Nature"…

"In 2010, after twenty years under development, Stallman said that he was "not very optimistic about the GNU Hurd. It makes some progress, but to be really superior it would require solving a lot of deep problems" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#585

Post by lII1lIlI11ll »

jabwd wrote: post #277
lII1lIlI11ll wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Rust drama is an uncommon failure of leadership for Torvalds. Instead of decisively saying "no, never" or "yes, make it so," he has consistently equivocated on the Rust issue. Given the crisis of confidence among a sizeable (and very vocal) contingent of the Linux community, that decision has backfired horribly. Efficiently collaborating on large distributed open source projects like Linux is as much social act…

> To me it looks like that for Linux big part of R4L experiment is to specifically understand whether Rust people can convince key stakeholders that R4L is good idea and get their buy-in and that is why he doesn't attempt to force it. This is the entire point. This has been DONE. First its "lets see if you can build a good driver", now its "ew rust". The maintainer of the DMA subsystem is showing how they're actively…

No, it is not the entire point. No one is really doubting whether you can write a driver in Rust, C++ or Swift. The whole experiment is whether you can slowly move in to existing mature kernel subsystems without being too disruptive.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#586

Post by steveklabnik »

wahern wrote: post #505
steveklabnik wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be super clear about it, Rust does not do strict aliasing. That’s a totally different set of rules than Rust’s aliasing rules.

I know Rust doesn't do "strict aliasing", literally speaking. But that's partly because Rust's borrowing rules change the framing of the term strict aliasing as used in C, etc. It's similar for terms like "undefined behavior", where there's sometimes a certain amount of pedanticism from Rust developers that merely serves to deflect the point of contention. Is this wrong? https://doc.rust-lang.org/nomicon/aliasing.htm…

Yes, it is a completely different set of rules. Strict aliasing is also referred to as type based aliasing analysis. Rust has categorically rejected this form of analysis, the aliasing rules are very different. It has nothing to do with types.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#587

Post by lazyasciiart »

jart wrote: post #579
Mond_ wrote: post #2

For context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42926732 https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/CAHk-=wi=ZmP2=TmHsFSU...

How is this not the top comment? I was scratching my head wondering until I found your links. So the smackdown from Linus is what motivated it. Honestly though if you read the email Linus is replying to, it was deserved. To be fair, Hector Martin may be one of the smartest hackers alive today. His fame goes way back to hacking the Playstation 3 with geohot and Hector has even found security vulnerabilities in Apple S…

> Cristoph refused to help Martin create Rust APIs for DMA. That's why he went ballistic.

No, he tried to prevent other people from doing the work to create Rust APIs, and said that he would do everything in his power to prevent anyone from doing it.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#588

Post by vednig »

danpalmer wrote: post #535
vednig wrote: post #534

Linux is one of the most complicated OS in the history of OS and both of them understand this in someway or the other, it's still not cracked enough market share to dominate the personal computer market even in 2025, but is already on millions of other devices except PCs and a small change in decision like r4l brings the whole perspective into matter, after the fact that rust is highly compute intensive language and…

Arguably the billions of Android phones/tablets running the Linux kernel are the personal computer market.

Exactly my point in terms of the chipsets, and the limited acceleration in capacity of evolution per year for small chip manufacturing companies unlike mediatek and qualcomm, furthered by silicon shortage and many other manufacturing facts, including a language like Rust at this stage should be subject to observation.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#589

Post by orf »

williamDafoe wrote: post #370

I get this impression that the Rust people think they are a stage where Rust is a viral phenom but it's really not. Nevertheless, they are behaving like its viral and trying to force it down everybody's throats, even though I never heard of some software package or system that was built natively in rust that truly went viral. The other day I tried to install a python package and - big surprise - it REQUIRED me to ins…

Was this comment written by an 80 year old who’s watched a Fox News segment on Rust? It definitely reads like that.

wsl ‘DOES’ have a rust toolchain, nobody is saying rust is going viral (what on earth…), you tried to install the python packages’ sdist rather than the wheel.

Get it together.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#590

Post by 4bpp »

gary_0 wrote: post #27

The Rust drama is an uncommon failure of leadership for Torvalds. Instead of decisively saying "no, never" or "yes, make it so," he has consistently equivocated on the Rust issue. Given the crisis of confidence among a sizeable (and very vocal) contingent of the Linux community, that decision has backfired horribly. And it's quite out of character for Linus not to have a blazingly clear opinion. (We all know his stan…

I do wonder if Linus is actually opposed to Rust in the kernel, but for whatever reason thinks that he can't afford to openly ban it or do anything beyond deniably letting it be obstructed by maintainers. The Rust language project and community are political and politically savvy in ways that few other open-source infrastructure projects are - it seems conceivable that if he declared against it, this might result in personal attacks and pressure on key backers/sponsors that would endanger his position or Linux itself.
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