Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Upcoming Rust language features for kernel development

lwn.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 240 posts

Re: Upcoming Rust language features for kernel development

#11

Post by timschmidt »

pjmlp wrote: post #10
timschmidt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for everything else on userspace compiled managed languages are a much better option As someone who's written a number of userspace applications in many languages as well as embedded firmwares running on bare metal, Rust is a rare gem that excels at both.

Only if those userspace applications are headless, Rust exceling at GUIs is a bit of a strech.

Well https://github.com/timschmidt/egui-rad-builder has come together rather well in the last week of hacking, if I say so myself. I think building a similar app with QT, for example, would have been significantly more challenging.

I'm particularly fond of how easy it was to make all the controls live in the editor, and editable with changes appearing immediately. imgui would probably provide a similar experience, but I find C++ much more of a pain to work with than Rust.

Re: Upcoming Rust language features for kernel development

#12

Post by discreteevent »

timschmidt wrote: post #8
pjmlp wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see Rust's place on low level systems programming, for everything else on userspace compiled managed languages are a much better option, systems following an architecture like Self, Inferno or Android, so I don't see a big deal with these efforts focusing on low level C like capabilities.

> for everything else on userspace compiled managed languages are a much better option As someone who's written a number of userspace applications in many languages as well as embedded firmwares running on bare metal, Rust is a rare gem that excels at both.

> Rust is a rare gem that excels at both.

This can be true but it can still be the case that a managed language is even better at one of them.

Re: Upcoming Rust language features for kernel development

#13

Post by mdhb »

timschmidt wrote: post #11
pjmlp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if those userspace applications are headless, Rust exceling at GUIs is a bit of a strech.

Well https://github.com/timschmidt/egui-rad-builder has come together rather well in the last week of hacking, if I say so myself. I think building a similar app with QT, for example, would have been significantly more challenging. I'm particularly fond of how easy it was to make all the controls live in the editor, and editable with changes appearing immediately. imgui would probably provide a similar experience, bu…

But that’s no longer the choice you need to make. Ubuntu themselves have said for a couple of years now that every new GUI app they make natively for Linux is going to be Flutter and dedicated a bunch of engineers to the project to make sure it’s a first class citizen.

Beyond that, Dart / Futter are truly an absolute pleasure to use for that use case.

Re: Upcoming Rust language features for kernel development

#14

Post by heavyset_go »

oersted wrote: post #5
hannesfur wrote: post #2

These seem like the first features that Rust in Linux bring to the Rust language that are not almost exclusively useful to the kernel. In my perception the focus on bringing features for the kernel has held up development in other parts of the language and the standard library.

As I understand it systems programming is the priority application area for Rust, and there are plenty of projects working on OSs, embedded or other bare-metal cases, as well as interoperability with complex C codebases. At first glance, these features look quite general to me and not particularly tied to the kernel, they are important utilities for doing this kind of programming in the real world.

What's the story with C interop now with these and related changes? I'm out of the loop.

Re: Upcoming Rust language features for kernel development

#15

Post by timschmidt »

mdhb wrote: post #13
timschmidt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well https://github.com/timschmidt/egui-rad-builder has come together rather well in the last week of hacking, if I say so myself. I think building a similar app with QT, for example, would have been significantly more challenging. I'm particularly fond of how easy it was to make all the controls live in the editor, and editable with changes appearing immediately. imgui would probably provide a similar experience, bu…

But that’s no longer the choice you need to make. Ubuntu themselves have said for a couple of years now that every new GUI app they make natively for Linux is going to be Flutter and dedicated a bunch of engineers to the project to make sure it’s a first class citizen. Beyond that, Dart / Futter are truly an absolute pleasure to use for that use case.

Sounds great for the Dart people. But unrelated to correcting misinformation about Rust. I'm not opposed to whatever language folks want to use. Just out here hacking in Rust because it suits my particular needs. And finding that it's enjoyable to hack GUIs as well as firmwares in.

Re: Upcoming Rust language features for kernel development

#16

Post by kachapopopow »

Everytime features are mentioned it makes me go: "it's all fun and games until someone puts tokio into the kernel", better yet if rust becomes complete enough and someone makes a direct composition renderer we could have entire applications that run entirely in the kernel which could be... interesting.

Re: Upcoming Rust language features for kernel development

#17

Post by mdhb »

timschmidt wrote: post #15
mdhb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that’s no longer the choice you need to make. Ubuntu themselves have said for a couple of years now that every new GUI app they make natively for Linux is going to be Flutter and dedicated a bunch of engineers to the project to make sure it’s a first class citizen. Beyond that, Dart / Futter are truly an absolute pleasure to use for that use case.

Sounds great for the Dart people. But unrelated to correcting misinformation about Rust. I'm not opposed to whatever language folks want to use. Just out here hacking in Rust because it suits my particular needs. And finding that it's enjoyable to hack GUIs as well as firmwares in.

No I get all that, but to the parent comments point however, there’s no way in hell I would ever pretend for a moment that one is as straightforward as the other and it’s no longer a choice between Rust and C++ both of which add a lot of complexity to a scenario where it offers very little benefit.

Re: Upcoming Rust language features for kernel development

#18

Post by timschmidt »

mdhb wrote: post #17
timschmidt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds great for the Dart people. But unrelated to correcting misinformation about Rust. I'm not opposed to whatever language folks want to use. Just out here hacking in Rust because it suits my particular needs. And finding that it's enjoyable to hack GUIs as well as firmwares in.

No I get all that, but to the parent comments point however, there’s no way in hell I would ever pretend for a moment that one is as straightforward as the other and it’s no longer a choice between Rust and C++ both of which add a lot of complexity to a scenario where it offers very little benefit.

Over the years, I've found that the complexity is there whether or not it's been papered over by a runtime. It's wonderful to forget about, until it's not. Some applications may never run into the limitations imposed by abstracting it away, but others run into them quickly.

"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" as the saying goes.

Re: Upcoming Rust language features for kernel development

#19

Post by pjmlp »

timschmidt wrote: post #11
pjmlp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if those userspace applications are headless, Rust exceling at GUIs is a bit of a strech.

Well https://github.com/timschmidt/egui-rad-builder has come together rather well in the last week of hacking, if I say so myself. I think building a similar app with QT, for example, would have been significantly more challenging. I'm particularly fond of how easy it was to make all the controls live in the editor, and editable with changes appearing immediately. imgui would probably provide a similar experience, bu…

How does it handle localization and assistive technologies, UI/UX tooling for designers, 3rd party component ecosystem?

Re: Upcoming Rust language features for kernel development

#20

Post by junon »

hannesfur wrote: post #2

These seem like the first features that Rust in Linux bring to the Rust language that are not almost exclusively useful to the kernel. In my perception the focus on bringing features for the kernel has held up development in other parts of the language and the standard library.

There are a lot of features being added for kernel/firmware development, they're just not on everyone's radar.

Philopp has been a particular force for change in this area.

Post reply on HN