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Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

lore.kernel.org

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Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#171

Post by aw1621107 »

1718627440 wrote: post #142
jcrben wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user, you may not be aware that C makes it relatively easy to create https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_overflow which are a major source of security vulnerabilities. This is one of the best reasons to rewrite software in Rust or any other more safe by default language.

This doesn't matter at all for programs like Git. Any non-free standing program running on a modern OS on modern hardware trying to access memory its not supposed to will be killed by the OS. This seams to be the more reasonable security-boundary then relying on the language implementation to just not issue code, that does illegal things. Yeah sure, memory-safety is nice for debuggibility and being more confident in…

> Any non-free standing program running on a modern OS on modern hardware trying to access memory its not supposed to will be killed by the OS.

This seems like a rather strong statement to me. Do you mind elaborating further?

Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#172

Post by nicoburns »

TuxSH wrote: post #160
1718627440 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't matter at all for programs like Git. Any non-free standing program running on a modern OS on modern hardware trying to access memory its not supposed to will be killed by the OS. This seams to be the more reasonable security-boundary then relying on the language implementation to just not issue code, that does illegal things. Yeah sure, memory-safety is nice for debuggibility and being more confident in…

Not quite the best example, since Git usually has unrestricted file access and network access through HTTP/SSH, any kind of RCE would be disastrous if used for data exfiltration, for instance. If you want a better example, take distributed database software: behind DMZ, and the interesting code paths require auth.

Unintentional bugs that caused data destruction would also be disastrous for a tool like git

Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#173

Post by sunshowers »

riedel wrote: post #86

Given that rust only works on e.g. cygwin recently (and still does not build many crates: i try to compile jujutsu and failed), this is a big blow to portability IMHO. While I try to like rust, I think making it mandatory for builds of essential tools like git is really too early.

?? I build Jujutsu and many other Rust programs from source on Windows.

Rust has a much better Windows story than C and bash do, due to its heritage as a language built by Mozilla for Firefox.

Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#174

Post by sunshowers »

Kwpolska wrote: post #143
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Git works only on cygwin too?

No, it doesn't. OP meant that the Rust support on Cygwin is bad; it is better with the native Windows API.

I don't quite understand. Why use a janky, lossy Linux emulation layer when you can just target Windows natively?

Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#175

Post by happytoexplain »

msm_ wrote: post #133
jcrben wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user, you may not be aware that C makes it relatively easy to create https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_overflow which are a major source of security vulnerabilities. This is one of the best reasons to rewrite software in Rust or any other more safe by default language.

Everyone on hackernews is well aware that C makes it relatively easy to create buffer overflows, and what buffer overflows are. You're still not responding to GP question.

I didn't know that C makes it easy.

Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#176

Post by germandiago »

hedgehog wrote: post #159
uecker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We might also have different priorities. I do not care too much that google and apple want to lock down their smartphone spyware and sales platforms. The supply chain risks and maintenance burden imposed onto me by the Rust ecosystem are much more of an concern.

I don't know what this has to do with locking down phones, but I do appreciate not getting compromised just for cloning a repo or opening my laptop at a coffee shop.

Who says you do not? :)

Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#178

Post by sunshowers »

hedgehog wrote: post #159
uecker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We might also have different priorities. I do not care too much that google and apple want to lock down their smartphone spyware and sales platforms. The supply chain risks and maintenance burden imposed onto me by the Rust ecosystem are much more of an concern.

I don't know what this has to do with locking down phones, but I do appreciate not getting compromised just for cloning a repo or opening my laptop at a coffee shop.

(There is a persistent idea that the lack of memory safety in C is good because it allows people to jailbreak their phones.)

Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#179

Post by oreally »

IshKebab wrote: post #168
oreally wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except now these software engineers have to code switch between languages. Could you software engineers stop making things harder for yourselves and playing this meaningless flex of a status game, and you know, focus on something tangible, meaningful, instead of adding more bureaucracy?

I'm guessing you aren't a software engineer based on this comment, but the difference between programming languages is tangible and meaningful. It isn't like human languages where they're mostly basically the same and achieve the same thing. And code switching between languages is not hard at all.

It's hilarious that you can assume such a thing just by a couple of words on the internet. Or maybe I'm not a 'software engineer' by your standards because unlike your closed group of SWEs I'm a lot less focused on resume padding and keeping my codebase sane and not exploding in complexity.

I should specify - it's hard in that it's troublesome to have to code switch and do a bunch of recall before working on the thing.

Say you've not worked on this secondary language for a long time, which absolutely happens, and have spend hours of effort to recall it. This takes time that you need not spend on, it's how your memory works.

Re: Git: Introduce Rust and announce it will become mandatory in the build system

#180

Post by johnisgood »

cschep wrote: post #85
johnisgood wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will leave this here for the future: $ ldd /usr/bin/git linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007f69c2d64000) libpcre2-8.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpcre2-8.so.0 (0x00007f69c2c81000) libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0x00007f69c2c67000) libc.so.6 => /usr/lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007f69c2616000) /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 => /usr/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f69c2d66000) $ ls -alh /usr/bin/git -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4.0M Aug 25 11:40 /usr/b…

Ok, I'll bite. While we are on Hacker News, this is still an enormously obtuse way to communicate. Are you saying that as users of git we will be negatively affected by deps being added and build times going up? Do you have evidence of that from past projects adding rust? Why not just say that??

No need to bite. :P

We will see!

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