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

Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

android.googlesource.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 393 posts

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#131

Post by zamadatix »

gameswithgo wrote: post #60
offtop5 wrote: post #19

Wait , so can rust generally be replace C++ code in most projects ? Has anyone here had success with a partial to Rust migration.

>Wait , so can rust generally be replace C++ code in most projects ? In principle Rust could replace every line of C++ code in the world. The questions of how often it would be a good idea to do so, practical to do so, is harder to say. It is promising that this bluetooth stack only needed 4 lines of unsafe though! Since the interop is zero overhead doing piecewise migrations is certainly possible, as has been going…

I thought curl was expressly not migrating any code to Rust?

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#132

Post by buu700 »

tschellenbach wrote: post #101

I'm always curious why bluetooth is such a terrible piece of technology. Did anyone write blogposts analyzing what went wrong?

I think this is a pretty interesting summary: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/mc13t4/c...

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#133

Post by benbristow »

seanalltogether wrote: post #28
mondoshawan wrote: post #2

I know the guy that heads up the team that did this work -- he and I spent 2+ years fighting Broadcom's old, god-awful bluetooth code. Our whole team used to play what-if games about replacing the thing while massive code dumps came in from vendors, making the task ever larger. Zach, if you're reading this, HUGE kudos to holding the line in replacing that, and double kudos for doing it in a verifiable, sane language!

Any insight into why Apple seems to have a much better bluetooth stack? I do a lot of BLE development that has to work cross platform, and we see constant GATT connection issues on android compared to almost none on ios.

I still find it buggy on my iPhone 12 Pro, as a user at least. Often says 'connected' to my headphones (Sony WH-100XM3's) when it's not, connecting to Alexa devices to stream audio often fails and requires a reboot to connect properly.

I can't believe Bluetooth is still such a pain in the bum in 2021.

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#134

Post by johnnycerberus »

kllrnohj wrote: post #89
fouric wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that Zig will still end up eclipsing Rust - not because it's a "more powerful" language, but because it's much easier to learn. Lower barriers of entry seem to matter more than mere "power" - see Common Lisp's multi-decade feature lead being ignored, and Python leapfrogging other more capable languages (Common Lisp) or equally capable ones that came first (Ruby) due to ease-of-use.

Zig is too uninteresting to eclipse anything. It's the same problem as D's -betterC option. It's not better-enough to motivate switching away from C in places where C is still used, and it's far too stripped down & basic to attract the majority that's gone to C++, Rust, Go, ObjC, or Swift (or even "full" D). It doesn't offer much to justify switching costs. If C++11 had never happened then maybe Zig would attract the…

I share your view partially. As you said, code generation is difficult and it can get messy pretty fast, but this is the beauty of Zig, you have these features tightly packed, there is a capped number of ways for doing things. In Zig you learn how to use the wand properly, instead of being distracted by trying different sizes and colors of wands. While many languages focus on the breadth of ways of doing things, Zig is all about the depth of a small set.

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#135

Post by cultyyy123 »

ModernMech wrote: post #115
dagmx wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly but Python is a completely different level of programming too. I do wonder if Rust is easier or harder than other comparable languages like C / C++ when the person has no prior knowledge of programming. I would say just the ease of having a hello world and the ease of the Rust book would make it easier to get to grips with. No dealing with complex build systems and compiler flags at the start

> I do wonder if Rust is easier or harder than other comparable languages like C / C++ when the person has no prior knowledge of programming. I can answer this because I previously taught the course in C and C++. The students supposedly have some knowledge of Java but they seem to always have forgotten all of it when they reach me. Students learning C use all of the footguns you can imagine. The biggest problem for t…

NOT TRUE!

You are doing it wrong If you are manually managing memory on Modern C++.

C++ has RAII built in even before Rust came to the scene.

I've never had a situation where I had to manage memory manually during my professional career in C++

If your students face seg faults, please show them Valgrind. Valgrind is better than GDB when it comes to seg faults. It can show you where exactly error occurred.

Edit: Oh I got downvoted for saying truth. I now know what they are really up to.

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#136

Post by cultyyy123 »

offtop5 wrote: post #19

Wait , so can rust generally be replace C++ code in most projects ? Has anyone here had success with a partial to Rust migration.

It's wise to use Rust in Security Critical Projects. Please see Google Fuchsia, they follow hybrid approach where critical stuff written in Rust and rest in C++

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#137

Post by ArchOversight »

benbristow wrote: post #133
seanalltogether wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any insight into why Apple seems to have a much better bluetooth stack? I do a lot of BLE development that has to work cross platform, and we see constant GATT connection issues on android compared to almost none on ios.

I still find it buggy on my iPhone 12 Pro, as a user at least. Often says 'connected' to my headphones (Sony WH-100XM3's) when it's not, connecting to Alexa devices to stream audio often fails and requires a reboot to connect properly. I can't believe Bluetooth is still such a pain in the bum in 2021.

Buggy Bluetooth on the other end... Alexa is running Linux, and the Sony is probably some custom bluetooth stack.

Once you move to all Apple bluetooth, things really smooth out. It seems that Apple does way more testing/validating of their Bluetooth stack.

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#138

Post by ttt0 »

nerpderp82 wrote: post #62
adamnemecek wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zig isn’t quite production ready.

And it doesn't have memory safety. Zig is really fun and it is excellent for small wasm modules, but until it gets memory safety it will never be a Rust alternative.

C++ doesn't have "memory safety" and it is a Rust alternative. Stop being pretentious, not every language has to have Rust's borrow checker or whatever its called.

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#139

Post by masklinn »

est31 wrote: post #83
rkangel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess would be that they can apply much more pressure to the Bluetooth chip vendor. The buying power that Apple has for designing in a particular chip is much bigger than any individual Android manufacturer (even Samsung). That gets them the leverage to get the chip vendor to do what they want.

> The buying power that Apple has for designing in a particular chip is much bigger than any individual Android manufacturer (even Samsung) Why does Samsung have smaller buying power than Apple? Doesn't Samsung sell more phones than them? Or is it because while Samsung sells more phones in total, Apple still has the most successful single models?

> Apple still has the most successful single models?

Not just that, every apple device has wireless access, and Apple has thrice the operating income and more than twice the net income of Samsung Electronics.

But yes the "value" of individual devices is also part of the equation, in the sense that Samsung has a lot of cheap-ish devices with fairly short lifetimes, they're not going to fight for device quality. Apple has a very limited number of devices they support for a long time. And they're probably bringing in a lot of baggage from having been screwed over by the plans and fuckups of their suppliers in the past.

And even then, the more time passes the more they just go "fuck'em all" and move chip design in-house, not just the "main" chips (AX, MX, SX) but the ancillary as well: the WX and HX series integrate bluetooth on the SoC. There's no doubt they'll eventually go their own way on larger devices as well, the U1 is probably the first steps towards that.

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#140

Post by rkangel »

est31 wrote: post #83
rkangel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess would be that they can apply much more pressure to the Bluetooth chip vendor. The buying power that Apple has for designing in a particular chip is much bigger than any individual Android manufacturer (even Samsung). That gets them the leverage to get the chip vendor to do what they want.

> The buying power that Apple has for designing in a particular chip is much bigger than any individual Android manufacturer (even Samsung) Why does Samsung have smaller buying power than Apple? Doesn't Samsung sell more phones than them? Or is it because while Samsung sells more phones in total, Apple still has the most successful single models?

I didn't realise that Samsung actually sold more phones than Apple (I've just looked at the numbers and you're right). Apple's smaller set of devices does help them a little but there isn't a lot to choose there.

I think my overall point is still valid because I have had Samsung phones for a while and have found their Bluetooth to be pretty good. This is not surprising as Samsung actually bought one of the biggest Bluetooth chip vendors (CSR) at one point, so they do have control over the full stack.

Post reply on HN