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What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

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Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#41

Post by pizlonator »

elteto wrote: post #35
pizlonator wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an unsafe ABI.

As unsafe as C or C++. In fact, safer, because only the ABI surface is unsafe, the rust code behind it can be as safe or unsafe as you want it to be. I was addressing this portion of your comment: "C's ABI and dynamic linking are the thing that enables the software to get huge". If the C ABI is what enables software to get huge then Rust is already there. There is a second claim in your comment about a "safe ABI", bu…

Here's the problem. If you told me that you rebuilt the Linux userland with Rust but you used C ABI at all of the boundaries, then I would be pretty convinced that you did not create a meaningful improvement to security because of how many dynamic linking boundaries there are. So many of the libraries involved are small, and big or small they expose ABIs that involve pointers to buffers and manual memory management.

> There is a second claim in your comment about a "safe ABI", but that is something that neither C or C++ offers right now.

Of course C and C++ are no safer in this regard. (Well, with Fil-C they are safer, but like whatever.)

But that misses the point, which is that:

- It would be a big deal if Rust did have a safe dynamic linking ABI. Someone should do it. That's the main point I'm making. I don't think deflecting by saying "but C is no safer" is super interesting.

- So long as this problem isn't fixed, the upside of using Rust to replace a lot of the load bearing stuff in an OS is much lower than it should be to justify the effort. This point is debatable for sure, but your arguments don't address it.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#42

Post by ChadNauseam »

School-Cotton wrote: post #23
Iridescent_ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust has editions for strong stability guarantees, and has had them for nearly a decade i believe. Besides, tech backing has grown way past the risky point.

FWIW, the GP comment's claim that you're lucky if you can compile 2-year-old code is exaggerated, but so is yours. Rust does not offer "strong stability guarantees". Adding a new method to a standard type or trait can break method inference, and the Rust standard library does that all the time. In C or C++, this isn't supposed to happen: a conformant implementation claiming to support e.g. C++17 would use ifdefs to g…

Adding a new method can change the behavior of C++ code as well due to templates. Does the standard library never add new methods because of that?

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#44

Post by pizlonator »

jjmarr wrote: post #37
pizlonator wrote: post #13

Here's the chasm I want to see Rust cross: Dynamic linking with a safe ABI, where if you change and recompile one library then the outcome has to obey some definition of safety, and ABI stability is about as good as C or Objective-C or Swift. Until that happens, it'll be hard to adopt Rust in a lot of C/C++ strongholds where C's ABI and dynamic linking are the thing that enables the software to get huge.

C++ ABI stability is the main reason improvements to the language get rejected. You cannot change anything that would affect the class layout of something in the STL. For templated functions where the implementation is in the header, ODR means you can't add optimizations later on. Maybe this was OK in the 90s when companies deleted the source code and laid off the programmers once the software was done, but it's not…

I think if Rust wants to evolve even more aggressively than C++ evolves, then that is a chasm that needs to be crossed.

In lots of domains, having a language that doesn't change very much, or that only changes very carefully with backcompat being taken super seriously, is more important than the memory safety guarantees Rust offers.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#45

Post by bluejekyll »

nekiwo wrote: post #33

Unrelated to the language debate, but it seems a lot of people here missed the fact that Rust Coreutils project is licensed under MIT, and I am not sure if I feel that it is the appropriate license for such project. As much as FSF's philosophy has bad PR at times with Stallman, the GPL licenses really do protect open source. Who knows what Canonical would do when all parts of Ubuntu become MIT...

A discussion on licenses will go sideways very quickly. GPL does limit the adoption of software in certain environments. So it really depends on your goals. Do you want an OSS project that will be useable by everyone (including corporations) or do you want to guarantee that the software will always be OSS and guarantee that Corporations can’t benefit from it without contributing back (potentially requiring them to open their own proprietary code).

There’s a lot of moral perspective that people apply to this decision, but not all developers have the same goals for their software. MIT is more flexible in its use than GPL, but doesn’t help ensure that software remains open.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#46

Post by mikepurvis »

system2 wrote: post #32
canadiantim wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI has made it exceptionally easy to program with. I've switched to using Rust from Python simply because of AI development

Really? You think AI writes better Rust than Python? Can you give me some examples? I strictly code Django, and Claude Code is really good at following my lead with it.

I think the argument is more that working rust code is better than working Python, and AI assistance makes it more tenable for average developers to successfully produce working rust code, and in particular is helpful for navigating the gap between "code written" and "code compiling" (eg why is the borrow checked mad at me).

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#47

Post by theLiminator »

system2 wrote: post #32
canadiantim wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI has made it exceptionally easy to program with. I've switched to using Rust from Python simply because of AI development

Really? You think AI writes better Rust than Python? Can you give me some examples? I strictly code Django, and Claude Code is really good at following my lead with it.

I think relative to the typical Rust code it likely does worse than AI relative to the typical Python code. But due to the compiler, it's possible you might get more correctness out of AI-generated rust code on average.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#48

Post by jjmarr »

pizlonator wrote: post #44
jjmarr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C++ ABI stability is the main reason improvements to the language get rejected. You cannot change anything that would affect the class layout of something in the STL. For templated functions where the implementation is in the header, ODR means you can't add optimizations later on. Maybe this was OK in the 90s when companies deleted the source code and laid off the programmers once the software was done, but it's not…

I think if Rust wants to evolve even more aggressively than C++ evolves, then that is a chasm that needs to be crossed. In lots of domains, having a language that doesn't change very much, or that only changes very carefully with backcompat being taken super seriously, is more important than the memory safety guarantees Rust offers.

In my view, this is a good thing.

As a C++ developer, I regularly deal with people that think creating a compiled object file and throwing away the source code is acceptable, or decide to hide source code for "security" while distributing object files. This makes my life hell.

Rust preventing this makes my life so much better.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#50

Post by ChadNauseam »

system2 wrote: post #32
canadiantim wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI has made it exceptionally easy to program with. I've switched to using Rust from Python simply because of AI development

Really? You think AI writes better Rust than Python? Can you give me some examples? I strictly code Django, and Claude Code is really good at following my lead with it.

The compile errors are great. I can change one function signature and have my output fill up with compile errors (that would all be runtime errors in python). Then I just let claude cook on fixing them. Any time you have to run your program and tell claude what’s wrong with it you’re wasting time, but because claude can run the compiler itself and iterate it’s much more able to complete a task without intervention.
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