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Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

marcan.st

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Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#311

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #266
nindalf wrote: post #93

Marcan links to an email by Ted Tso'o ( https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250208204416.GL1130956@mit.ed... ) that is interesting to read. Although it starts on a polarising note ("thin blue line"), it does a good job of explaining the difficulties that Linux maintainers face and why they make the choices they do. It makes sense to be extremely adversarial about accepting code because they're on the hook for maintaining…

Thank you to share the Ted T'so LKM post. Can you explain the culture reference "thin blue line"? I never heard it before.

[deleted]

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#312

Post by K0nserv »

jstimpfle wrote: post #224
Certhas wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also not truthful because many of the Rust maintainers are long time C contributors. Marcan also linked to this resignation of a Rust Maintainer: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20240828211117.9422-1-wedsonaf@... which references this fantastic exchange: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiPp9YEBV0Q&t=1529s I am not a C person, or a kernel level person, I just watch this from the sideline to learn something every now…

It's practically impossible to document all your assumptions in the type system. Attempting to do so results in code that is harder to read and write. You have a choice between code that statically asserts all assumptions in the type system but doesn't exist, is slow, or a pain to work with, and code that is beautiful, obvious, performant, but does contain the occasional bug. I am not against static safety, but there…

Encoding assumptions and invariants in the type system is a spectrum. Rust, by it's very nature, places you quite far along that spectrum immediately. One should consider if the correctness achieved by this is worth the extra work. However, if there is one place where correctness is paramount, surely it's the Linux Kernel.

> [..]Attempting to do so results in code that is harder to read and write.

> You have a choice between code that statically asserts all assumptions in the type system but doesn't exist, is slow, or a pain to work with, and code that is beautiful, obvious, performant, but does contain the occasional bug.

I don't think you are expressing objective truth, this is all rather subjective. I find code that encodes many assumptions in the type system beautiful and obvious. In part this is due to familiarity, of course something like this will seem inscrutable to someone who doesn't know Rust, in the same way that C looks inscrutable to someone who doesn't know any programming.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#313

Post by diggan »

rekoil wrote: post #287
diggan wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a kernel developer, and never done anything of the sorts either. But, I think the argument is that if they have two versions of something (the C version + the Rust bindings), the logic/behavior/"semantics" of the C version would need to be encoded into the Rust types, and if a C-only developer changes the C version only, how are they supposed to proceed with updating the Rust bindings if they don't want to wr…

Which is a moot point because the agreement right now is that Rust code is allowed to break, so the C developer in question can just ignore Rust, and a Rust person will take care of it for them.

> Which is a moot point because the agreement right now is that Rust code is allowed to break, so the C developer in question can just ignore Rust

So then the argument that even semantics encoded in the Rust types, can be out of the date compared to the actual code, is actually a real thing? I read that somewhere else here in the comments, but didn't understand how the types could ever be out-of-date, but this would explain that argument.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#314

Post by nrabulinski »

rdtsc wrote: post #209

A person can be in a tough spot personally and then things seem to spiral out of control around them because that just cannot be 100% isolated from professional stuff or other spheres of life. It seems like this might have happened to Hector based on the post. We've all been there and that part is completely understandable. > I get that some people might not have liked my Mastodon posts. Yes, I can be abrasive someti…

> That’s not ok.

Then entertain his question and tell us what is? Bringing up people’s attention to the matter to finally somehow resolve the situation is his last resort, after spending years trying to upstream even trivial patches. You can eat your cake and have it too - you can’t say you want rust in the kernel and then sabotage any upstreaming efforts

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#315

Post by yellowapple »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #125
cogman10 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given the narrow set of hardware they're aiming to support and that they're writing many of their own drivers _anyway_ (and so are not relying as much on the large # of existing linux drivers), that approach might be more viable. They are relying heavily on mesa. I'd also assume that GNU stuff is also pretty essential. Perhaps Android would be possible? It has a HAL that might be easier to work with than the raw li…

> They are relying heavily on mesa Isn't mesa portable? Or are there parts that are OS-specific? > With android, they'd also still have GNU stuff available. I don't follow; Android is a non-GNU Linux distro. Or do you mean that being on Linux makes GNU stuff easy? (But then, GNU runs happily on BSDs and other unix-likes)

> Isn't mesa portable? Or are there parts that are OS-specific?

Even the OS-specific parts are at least permissively-licensed. OpenBSD is about as religious about "all new code must be under an ISC-compatible license" as it gets, and even they pull in Linux DRM/Mesa code for hardware graphics acceleration: https://man.openbsd.org/drm.7

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#316

Post by patmorgan23 »

Suzuran wrote: post #282
throwaway2037 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you to share the Ted T'so LKM post. Can you explain the culture reference "thin blue line"? I never heard it before.

It's a motto used by American law enforcement to justify extrajudicial punishment. Since they are the "thin blue line" that separates the public from anarchy, they are justified in acting independently to "protect" us when judges and juries do not "cooperate".

Not just extrajudicial punishment, but overlooking corrupt acts and crimes from fellow officers. That it's more important to maintain the 'brotherhood' than to arrest an officer caught driving home drunk.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#317

Post by duxup »

karaterobot wrote: post #177
duxup wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always tell this story about working with sales at a job where I worked in tech support. Sales would call me up and ask why I hadn't talked to their client about their very important ticket. I would tell them: "I have 5 P1 tickets, 8 P2 tickets, and dozens of P3 tickets. Your ticket is a P3 ticket." They would ask that I change it to a P1. I would. Then they would call me an hour later asking me about the ticket an…

Good for them for at least understanding at that point. The typical response is to say "I get that, I really do—can you move this one to the front of the line for me?" and then maybe a vague threat like "I can talk to your manager if it would help".

I always invited them to talk to my manager if they wished. "If you can get my manager to tell me to do the thing, I'll happily do it."

I got along great with the sales guys. They could understand that kind of thing.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#318

Post by ThatGuyRaion »

dark-star wrote: post #74

Trying to push Rust code into Linux and after a year calling it a "failure of leadership" when people are reluctant don't welcome your code with open arms is not very professional. It has taken other projects decades of out-of-tree maintenance until their code finally got in (RTLinux). The correct way would have been to maintain the Rust code out-of-tree, for as long as it would take, which would also somewhat prove…

I checked into Reiser4 and they are still indeed working on that out of tree. Hats off to people who stick to it, though I think renaming the file system would have been a smart idea.

That's the only other project I can think of that's out of tree besides the usual suspect (ZoL)

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#319

Post by Blot2882 »

ThatGuyRaion wrote: post #187

Marcan brings up plenty of good points regarding contributing to kernel.org being stuck in the 1990s. However, he's got no social skills nor does he have what it takes to man up and understand he won't get his way. Additionally I doubt that he really is dealing with stalkers to the degree that he is implying; real people don't talk about their stalkers so much. When I was stalked and harassed I kept the details light…

> real people don't talk about their stalkers so much. When I was stalked and harassed I kept the details light and didn't provide much in the way of actual community details because I went to the FBI and local police to deal with it

You actually provided more details here than he did, so I guess that's not true.

>> Suffice it to say, I ended up traveling for most of the year, all the while having to handle various abusers and stalkers who harassed and attacked me and my family (and continue to do so).

If anything, I am more doubtful you had stalkers since you are also in this thread saying this[1]. What an unsympathetic reply. You certainly don't come off like you're aware of the stress and fear that can bring if your answer to other people being stalked is "rethink your life choices."

> Sounds to me like you just need to take a break from the internet friend. If you're that high profile that you're getting hit over and over, maybe you need to rethink your life choices. If it bothers you that much especially.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43038512

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#320

Post by School-Cotton »

mcherm wrote: post #296
throwaway2037 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you to share the Ted T'so LKM post. Can you explain the culture reference "thin blue line"? I never heard it before.

In the US, this is a reference to the belief that members of law enforcement should be loyal folirst to other members of law enforcement and only secondarily to the law. Or at least that is how I have always understood it.

It seems obvious that that’s not what Ted intended it to mean, since it wouldn’t even make sense in this context (the debate doesn’t really seem to be about whether maintainers should be loyal to other maintainers).

A more charitable interpretation would be “we’re the only line of defense protecting something good and valuable from the outside world, so people should give significant weight to our opinions and decisions”. Which, to be clear, I would still mostly disagree with WRT the police, but it at least doesn’t explicitly endorse corruption.

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