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Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

lore.kernel.org

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Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#91

Post by uecker »

hedgehog wrote: post #71
IshKebab wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm just old and moany, and I need to step aside for bigger and better things such as Rust. You are. This is firm "I don't want to have to learn new things" territory, which isn't a viable attitude in this industry. In any case Rust is usually easier than C (excluding buggy C which is very easy to write), and certainly easier than actually learning the Git or Linux codebases.

I think it is often under appreciated by people who haven't worked in security how hard high quality C is in practice.

We might also have different priorities. I do not care too much that google and apple want to lock down their smartphone spyware and sales platforms. The supply chain risks and maintenance burden imposed onto me by the Rust ecosystem are much more of an concern.

Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#92

Post by fweimer »

antihero wrote: post #17
jmillikin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's at least one proprietary platform that supports Git built by via a vendor-provided C compiler, but for which no public documentation exists and therefore no LLVM support is possible. Ctrl+F for "NonStop" in https://lwn.net/Articles/998115/

Shouldn't these platforms work on getting Rust to support it rather than have our tools limited by what they can consume? https://github.com/Rust-GCC/gccrs

There isn't even a Nonstop port of GCC yet. Today, Nonstop is big-endian x86-64, so tacking this onto the existing backend is going to be interesting.

Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#93

Post by toast0 »

IshKebab wrote: post #57
bArray wrote: post #54

Maybe I'm just old and moany, and I need to step aside for bigger and better things such as Rust. But. Now rather than needing to understand just C to work on Git/kernel, you now need to also know Rust. The toolchain complexity is increasing, and the mix of these languages increases the barrier to entry. I'm highly invested into Git, having learned the tooling and having a significant number of projects constructed w…

> I'm just old and moany, and I need to step aside for bigger and better things such as Rust. You are. This is firm "I don't want to have to learn new things" territory, which isn't a viable attitude in this industry. In any case Rust is usually easier than C (excluding buggy C which is very easy to write), and certainly easier than actually learning the Git or Linux codebases.

> You are. This is firm "I don't want to have to learn new things" territory, which isn't a viable attitude in this industry.

It's viable, but limiting. Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to, which is why it's called work. But if you can choose what platforms you work on, you can orient towards things where things change less, and then you don't need to learn new things as often.

Chances are, if you get into the weeds in a lot of C programs, Rust is in your future, but it's viable to not want that, and to moan about it while doing it when you need to.

Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#94

Post by pyrale »

antihero wrote: post #17
jmillikin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's at least one proprietary platform that supports Git built by via a vendor-provided C compiler, but for which no public documentation exists and therefore no LLVM support is possible. Ctrl+F for "NonStop" in https://lwn.net/Articles/998115/

Shouldn't these platforms work on getting Rust to support it rather than have our tools limited by what they can consume? https://github.com/Rust-GCC/gccrs

A maintainer for that specific platform was more into the line of thinking that Git should bend over backwards to support them because "loss of support could have societal impact [...] Leaving debit or credit card authorizers without a supported git would be, let's say, "bad"."

To me it looks like big corps enjoying the idea of having free service so they can avoid maintaining their own stuff, and trying the "too big to fail" fiddle on open source maintainers, with little effect.

Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#97

Post by kstrauser »

delusional wrote: post #39

It seems unwise, to me, to tie the life of a project as fundamental, and conceptually simple, as git to a compiler and runtime as complicated as rust. The beauty of the unsafety of C is partially that it's pretty easy to spin up a compiler on a new platform. The same cannot be said of Rust.

One argument from the git devs is that it’s very hard to implement smarter algorithms in C, though. For example, it uses arrays in places where a higher level language would use a hash, because the C version of that is harder to write, maintain, and debug. It’s also much easier to write correct threaded code in Rust than C. Between those 2 alone, using a more robust language could make it straightforward to add performance gains that benefit everyone.

Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#98

Post by sebtron »

I am curious, what is the reason behind introducing Rust in Git?

I am not familiar with Git development, I am just a user. But my impression is that it is already a complete tool that won't require much new code to be written. Fixes and improvements here and there, sure, but that does not seem like a good reason to start using a new language. In contrast, I understand why adding it to e.g. Linux development makes sense, since new drivers will always need to be written.

Can anyone explain what I might be missing?

Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#99

Post by jlarocco »

motorest wrote: post #84
jmillikin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's at least one proprietary platform that supports Git built by via a vendor-provided C compiler, but for which no public documentation exists and therefore no LLVM support is possible. Ctrl+F for "NonStop" in https://lwn.net/Articles/998115/

> There's at least one proprietary platform that supports Git built by via a vendor-provided C compiler, but for which no public documentation exists and therefore no LLVM support is possible. That's fine. The only impact is that they won't be able to use the latest and greatest release of Git. Once those platforms work on their support for Rust they will be able to jump back to the latest and greatest.

It's sad to see people be so nonchalant about potentially killing off smaller platforms like this. As more barriers to entry are added, competition is going to decrease, and the software ecosystem is going to keep getting worse. First you need a lib C, now you need lib C and Rust, ...

But no doubt it's a great way for the big companies funding Rust development to undermine smaller players...

Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#100

Post by tankenmate »

IshKebab wrote: post #58
monkeyelite wrote: post #29

How does this help me as a user of git?

In future it might be more reliable and faster, maybe with more features. But we probably won't see any effect for 10 years or so.

Except there are far less Rust developers than C developers, so contributions will start to drop as Rust usage expands in git.
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