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APT Rust requirement raises questions

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Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#11

Post by epolanski »

petcat wrote: post #3

Interesting how instead of embracing Rust as a required toolchain for APT, the conversation quickly devolved into "why don't we just build a tool that can translate memory-safe Rust code into memory-unsafe C code? Then we don't have to do anything." This feels like swimming upstream just for spite.

The problem is that rust is being shoved in pointless places with a rewrite-everything-in-rust mentality.

There's lunatics that want to replace basic Unix tools like sudo, etc, that are battle tested since ages which has been a mess of bugs till now.

Instead Rust should find it's niches beyond rewriting what works, but tackling what doesn't.

Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#12

Post by reidrac »

geerlingguy wrote: post #5

I remembered reading about this news back when that first message was posted on the mailing list, and didn't think much of it then (rust has been worming its way into a lot of places over the past few years, just one more thing I tack on for some automation)... But seeing the maintainer works for Canonical, it seems like the tail (Ubuntu) keeps trying to wag the dog (Debian ecosystem) without much regard for the wide…

> As an end user, it doesn't concern me too much ...

It doesn't concern me neither, but there's some attitude here that makes me uneasy.

This could have been managed better. I see a similar change in the future that could affect me, and there will be precedent. Canonical paying Devs and all, it isn't a great way of influencing a community.

Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#13

Post by genewitch »

epolanski wrote: post #11
petcat wrote: post #3

Interesting how instead of embracing Rust as a required toolchain for APT, the conversation quickly devolved into "why don't we just build a tool that can translate memory-safe Rust code into memory-unsafe C code? Then we don't have to do anything." This feels like swimming upstream just for spite.

The problem is that rust is being shoved in pointless places with a rewrite-everything-in-rust mentality. There's lunatics that want to replace basic Unix tools like sudo, etc, that are battle tested since ages which has been a mess of bugs till now. Instead Rust should find it's niches beyond rewriting what works, but tackling what doesn't.

We need lisp, cobol, and java in apt, too. and firefox.

Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#14

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

epolanski wrote: post #11
petcat wrote: post #3

Interesting how instead of embracing Rust as a required toolchain for APT, the conversation quickly devolved into "why don't we just build a tool that can translate memory-safe Rust code into memory-unsafe C code? Then we don't have to do anything." This feels like swimming upstream just for spite.

The problem is that rust is being shoved in pointless places with a rewrite-everything-in-rust mentality. There's lunatics that want to replace basic Unix tools like sudo, etc, that are battle tested since ages which has been a mess of bugs till now. Instead Rust should find it's niches beyond rewriting what works, but tackling what doesn't.

Is the apt package manager a pointless place? It seems like a pretty foundational piece of supply chain software with a large surface area.

Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#15

Post by bakugo »

elteto wrote: post #4
bakugo wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Maybe they are just really tired of having to deal with people who constantly object and throw every possible obstacle they can on the way.

Maybe they wouldn't experience so much pushback if they were more humble, had more respect for established software and practices, and were more open to discussion.

You can't go around screaming "your code SUCKS and you need to rewrite it my way NOW" at everyone all the time and expect people to not react negatively.

Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#16

Post by sidewndr46 »

epolanski wrote: post #11
petcat wrote: post #3

Interesting how instead of embracing Rust as a required toolchain for APT, the conversation quickly devolved into "why don't we just build a tool that can translate memory-safe Rust code into memory-unsafe C code? Then we don't have to do anything." This feels like swimming upstream just for spite.

The problem is that rust is being shoved in pointless places with a rewrite-everything-in-rust mentality. There's lunatics that want to replace basic Unix tools like sudo, etc, that are battle tested since ages which has been a mess of bugs till now. Instead Rust should find it's niches beyond rewriting what works, but tackling what doesn't.

I seem to remember going through this with systemD in Ubuntu. Lots of lessons learned seemed to come back as "didn't we fix this bug 3 years ago?"

Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#17

Post by dralley »

epolanski wrote: post #11
petcat wrote: post #3

Interesting how instead of embracing Rust as a required toolchain for APT, the conversation quickly devolved into "why don't we just build a tool that can translate memory-safe Rust code into memory-unsafe C code? Then we don't have to do anything." This feels like swimming upstream just for spite.

The problem is that rust is being shoved in pointless places with a rewrite-everything-in-rust mentality. There's lunatics that want to replace basic Unix tools like sudo, etc, that are battle tested since ages which has been a mess of bugs till now. Instead Rust should find it's niches beyond rewriting what works, but tackling what doesn't.

Converting parsers to Rust is not "pointless". Doing string manipulation in C is both an awful experience and also extremely fertile ground for serious issues.

Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#18

Post by donkeybeer »

dralley wrote: post #17
epolanski wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that rust is being shoved in pointless places with a rewrite-everything-in-rust mentality. There's lunatics that want to replace basic Unix tools like sudo, etc, that are battle tested since ages which has been a mess of bugs till now. Instead Rust should find it's niches beyond rewriting what works, but tackling what doesn't.

Converting parsers to Rust is not "pointless". Doing string manipulation in C is both an awful experience and also extremely fertile ground for serious issues.

apt is C++

Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#19

Post by lagniappe »

bakugo wrote: post #15
elteto wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they are just really tired of having to deal with people who constantly object and throw every possible obstacle they can on the way.

Maybe they wouldn't experience so much pushback if they were more humble, had more respect for established software and practices, and were more open to discussion. You can't go around screaming "your code SUCKS and you need to rewrite it my way NOW" at everyone all the time and expect people to not react negatively.

The endless crusades are indeed tiresome.

Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#20

Post by fn-mote »

The most interesting criticism / idea in the article was that the parts that are intended for Rust-ification should actually be removed from core apt.

> it would be better to remove the code that is used to parse the .deb, .ar, and .tar formats [...] from APT entirely. It is only needed for two tools, apt-ftparchive and apt-extracttemplates [...]

Another interesting, although perhaps tangential, criticism was that the "new solver" currently lacks a testsuite (unit tests; it has integration tests). I'm actually kind of surprised that writing a dependency solver is a greenfield project instead of using an existing one. Or is this just a dig at something that pulls in a well-tested external module for solving?

Posted in curiosity, not knowing much about apt.

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