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Hard Rust requirements from May onward

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Re: Hard Rust requirements from May onward

#211

Post by Valodim »

s20n wrote: post #187

> This extends at first to the Rust compiler and standard library, and the Sequoia ecosystem. By Sequoia, are they talking about replacing GnuPG with https://sequoia-pgp.org/ for signature verification? I really hope they don't replace the audited and battle-tested GnuPG parts with some new-fangled project like that just because it is written in "memory-safe" rust.

Sequoia-PGP is 8 years old at this point, their 1.0 happened half a decade ago.

Meanwhile, GnuPG is well regarded for its code maturity. But it is a C codebase with nearly no tests, no CI pipeline(!!), an architecture that is basically a statemachine with side effects, and over 200 flags. In my experience, only people who haven't experienced the codebase speak positively of it.

Re: Hard Rust requirements from May onward

#212

Post by noir_lord »

bfkwlfkjf wrote: post #145
julian-klode wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that's true and there's synergies but keep in mind I also have a personal mind

[flagged]

I think that's unkind absent any proof otherwise which you haven't posted.

In reality a lot of the heavily used parts of Linux (and open source generally) are going to have some commercial involvement or are we suggesting that no one should be paid by any of the companies backing Linux who use Linux because to me that sounds worse.

Whether you like it or not, Linux/Open Source hasn't been entirely the preserve of unpaid people doing it for fun for a long time.

Re: Hard Rust requirements from May onward

#213

Post by unethical_ban »

bfkwlfkjf wrote: post #145
julian-klode wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that's true and there's synergies but keep in mind I also have a personal mind

[flagged]

Are you just being clever by mocking someone with a job or so you think there is something wrong with this technical decision?

Re: Hard Rust requirements from May onward

#214

Post by wolvesechoes »

lambdaone wrote: post #161

It's about time. Critical infrastructure still written in C - particularly code that parses data from untrusted sources - is technical debt that is only going to get worse over time. It's not as if Rust is that much more difficult to write than C. Rust is explicitly designed to be what you'd get if you were to re-create C knowing what we know now about language design and code safety. If 32-bit x86 support can be dro…

If people really, really want to have all infra written in Rust, they should step-up and stop using LLVM.

Re: Hard Rust requirements from May onward

#215

Post by jsheard »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #214
lambdaone wrote: post #161

It's about time. Critical infrastructure still written in C - particularly code that parses data from untrusted sources - is technical debt that is only going to get worse over time. It's not as if Rust is that much more difficult to write than C. Rust is explicitly designed to be what you'd get if you were to re-create C knowing what we know now about language design and code safety. If 32-bit x86 support can be dro…

If people really, really want to have all infra written in Rust, they should step-up and stop using LLVM.

There is a pure-Rust compiler backend in the works, but that's going to take a long time to mature so it's just pragmatic to use LLVM in the meantime. Especially since the exploitation potential is pretty contrived in this case - if you compile compromised code then you're probably owned anyway, regardless of the backends memory safety.

Re: Hard Rust requirements from May onward

#216

Post by kortilla »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #138
justinclift wrote: post #6

One of the follow up messages is interesting: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2025/10/msg00288.html > Rust is already a hard requirement on all Debian release architectures and ports except for alpha, hppa, m68k, and sh4 (which do not provide sqv). Wonder what this means for those architectures then?

Who is still using these machines? Genuine question, not trolling. It looks like the last machines of each architecture were released: Alpha in 2007 HP-PA in 2008 m68k in pre-2000 though derivatives are used in embedded systems sh4 in 1998 (though possible usage via "J2 core" using expired patents) This means that most are nearly 20 years old or older. Rust target triples exist for: m68k: https://doc.rust-lang.org/ni…

Think about any time a computer is used in something designed to last 30+ years.

Cars, airplanes, construction equipment, etc.

Re: Hard Rust requirements from May onward

#217

Post by pseudalopex »

nikanj wrote: post #15

The language is incredibly frank, and I agree with it completely. The retro-computing hobby doesn't need the ability to run contemporary operating systems. It's insane that x86 Debian is still compiling all software targeting Pentium Pro (from 1995!). x64 Debian is a bit more modern, and you must splurge for a CPU from 2005 (Prescott) to get the plethora of features it requires

> It's insane that x86 Debian is still compiling all software targeting Pentium Pro (from 1995!).

Debian 13 raised the x86 requirement to Pentium 4 because LLVM required SSE2 and Rust required LLVM.

The target before was not Pentium Pro in my understanding. It was Pentium Pro equivalent embedded CPUs. Servers and desktops since 2005 could use x86-64 Debian.

Re: Hard Rust requirements from May onward

#218

Post by forgetfulness »

Antibabelic wrote: post #32
nikanj wrote: post #15

The language is incredibly frank, and I agree with it completely. The retro-computing hobby doesn't need the ability to run contemporary operating systems. It's insane that x86 Debian is still compiling all software targeting Pentium Pro (from 1995!). x64 Debian is a bit more modern, and you must splurge for a CPU from 2005 (Prescott) to get the plethora of features it requires

Is it just the "retro-computing hobby"? There could still be businesses who might need support for old machines, especially in developing countries. I don't know the actual situation though, I'm open to the idea that my suggestion is insane.

These architectures were for were high end machines at the time, universities and government agencies would indeed been the only ones buying these, and they probably migrated to commodity hardware long ago; if migrating to a PC-compatible architecture had been off the table for them, so had been keeping these things running after their EOL.

(In my second-tier university at my developing country, the Sun workstation hadn’t been turned on in years by the late 2000s, and the the minicomputer they bought in the 1980s was furniture at the school)

Edit: As for big businesses, they have support plans from IBM or HP for their mainframes, nothing relevant to Debian.

Re: Hard Rust requirements from May onward

#220

Post by pezezin »

kortilla wrote: post #216
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is still using these machines? Genuine question, not trolling. It looks like the last machines of each architecture were released: Alpha in 2007 HP-PA in 2008 m68k in pre-2000 though derivatives are used in embedded systems sh4 in 1998 (though possible usage via "J2 core" using expired patents) This means that most are nearly 20 years old or older. Rust target triples exist for: m68k: https://doc.rust-lang.org/ni…

Think about any time a computer is used in something designed to last 30+ years. Cars, airplanes, construction equipment, etc.

I am pretty sure that those machines are not running Debian.
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