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Rust in the kernel is no longer experimental

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Re: Rust in the kernel is no longer experimental

#101

Post by sayamqazi »

littlestymaar wrote: post #89
ottah wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised to see zig in the kernel at some point

IMHO Zig doesn't bring enough value of its own to be worth bearing the cost of another language in the kernel. Rust is different because it both: - significantly improve the security of the kernel by removing the nastiest class of security vulnerabilities. - And reduce cognitive burden for contributors by allowing to encode in thr typesystem the invariants that must be upheld. That doesn't mean Zig is a bad language…

Pardon my ignorance but I find the claim "removing the nastiest cla ss of security vulnerabilities" to be a bold claim. Is there ZERO use of "unsafe" rust in kernel code??

Re: Rust in the kernel is no longer experimental

#103

Post by johncolanduoni »

mustache_kimono wrote: post #90
drnick1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every system under the Sun has a C compiler. This isn't remotely true for Rust. Rust is more modern than C, but has it's own issues, among others very slow compilation times. My guess is that C will be around long after people will have moved on from Rust to another newfangled alternative.

> Every system under the Sun has a C compiler... My guess is that C will be around long after people will have moved on from Rust to another newfangled alternative. This is still the worst possible argument for C. If C persists in places no one uses, then who cares?

You almost certainly have a bunch of devices containing a microcontroller that runs an architecture not targeted by LLVM. The embedded space is still incredibly fragmented.

That said, only a handful of those architectures are actually so weird that they would be hard to write a LLVM backend for. I understand why the project hasn’t established a stable backend plugin API, but it would help support these ancillary architectures that nobody wants to have to actively maintain as part of the LLVM project. Right now, you usually need to use a fork of the whole LLVM project when using experimental backends.

Re: Rust in the kernel is no longer experimental

#105

Post by RealityVoid »

lmm wrote: post #51
checker659 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS kernels? Everything from numpy to CUDA to NCCL is using C/C++ (doing all the behind the scene heavy lifting), never mind the classic systems software like web browsers, web servers, networking control plane (the list goes on).

Newer web servers have already moved away from C/C++. Web browsers have been written in restricted subsets of C/C++ with significant additional tooling for decades at this point, and are already beginning to move to Rust.

> Web browsers have been written in restricted subsets of C/C++ with significant additional tooling for decades at this point

So, written in C/C++? It seems to me you're trying to make a point that reality doesn't agree with but you stubbornly keep pushing it.

Re: Rust in the kernel is no longer experimental

#106

Post by javawizard »

Simplita wrote: post #102

I’m curious how they’ll manage long term safety without the guarantees Rust brought. That tradeoff won’t age well.

You may want to read the article.

(Spoiler alert: Rust graduated to a full, first-class part of the kernel; it isn't being removed.)

Re: Rust in the kernel is no longer experimental

#107

Post by javawizard »

silisili wrote: post #104
Simplita wrote: post #102

I’m curious how they’ll manage long term safety without the guarantees Rust brought. That tradeoff won’t age well.

It's late, but I'm having a hell of a time parsing this. Could you explain what you meant?

I think they read the title but not the article and assumed Rust was being removed, and (rightfully, if that were true) opined that that was a shortsighted decision.

(Of course, that's not what's happening at all.)

Re: Rust in the kernel is no longer experimental

#108

Post by silisili »

javawizard wrote: post #107
silisili wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's late, but I'm having a hell of a time parsing this. Could you explain what you meant?

I think they read the title but not the article and assumed Rust was being removed, and (rightfully, if that were true) opined that that was a shortsighted decision. (Of course, that's not what's happening at all.)

Ah! I hadn't considered that, thanks. That makes way more sense - having read the article I couldn't figure out what was being said here otherwise.

Re: Rust in the kernel is no longer experimental

#109

Post by littlestymaar »

sayamqazi wrote: post #101
littlestymaar wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO Zig doesn't bring enough value of its own to be worth bearing the cost of another language in the kernel. Rust is different because it both: - significantly improve the security of the kernel by removing the nastiest class of security vulnerabilities. - And reduce cognitive burden for contributors by allowing to encode in thr typesystem the invariants that must be upheld. That doesn't mean Zig is a bad language…

Pardon my ignorance but I find the claim "removing the nastiest cla ss of security vulnerabilities" to be a bold claim. Is there ZERO use of "unsafe" rust in kernel code??

Not zero, but Rust-based kernels (see redox, hubris, asterinas, or blog_os) have demonstrated that you only need a small fraction of unsafe code to make a kernel (3-10%) and it's also the least likely places to make a memory-related error in a C-based kernel in the first place (you're more likely to make a memory-related error when working on the implementation of an otherwise challenging algorithm that has nothing to do with memory management itself, than you are when you are explicitly focused on the memory-management part).

So while there could definitely be an exploitable memory bug in the unsafe part of the kernel, expect those to be at least two orders of magnitude less frequent than with C (as an anecdotal evidence, the Android team found memory defects to be between 3 and 4 orders of magnitude less in practice over the past few years).

Re: Rust in the kernel is no longer experimental

#110

Post by keyle »

markus_zhang wrote: post #11

Not a system programmer -- at this point, does C hold any significant advantage over Rust? Is it inevitable that everything written in C is going to be gradually converted to safer languages?

C is fun to write. I can write Rust, but I prefer writing C. I prefer compiling C, I prefer debugging C. I prefer C.

It's a bit like asking with the new mustang on the market, with airbags and traction control, why would you ever want to drive a classic mustang?

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