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A cross-platform multi-target dotfiles manager written in Rust

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Re: A cross-platform multi-target dotfiles manager written in Rust

#41

Post by jvanderbot »

HackerThemAll wrote: post #36
glutamate wrote: post #6

Serious question: why Rust? Sounds like this is not exactly systems level programming or any user would suffer from or even notice garbage collection latency. Is Rust building up a decent ecosystem now for application programming? When I tried developing in Rust I came to the conclusion that you pay a heavy price for not having a garbage collector. Was I doing it wrong?

Serious question: why not, if the author just knows Rust? Are you so allergic to anything written in Rust? Then get some new pills and ointments because there's going to be more and more of it.

The antibodies are probably to the "written in rust" addendum, which seems unnecessary unless rust adds something to the product. Much of the answer above to "why Rust" concerns the developer, and we are potential customers, so who cares? Just drop the "in Rust" and don't worry going forward.

Honestly though I thought we were past the "written in Rust" phase.

Re: A cross-platform multi-target dotfiles manager written in Rust

#42

Post by goku12 »

HackerThemAll wrote: post #36
glutamate wrote: post #6

Serious question: why Rust? Sounds like this is not exactly systems level programming or any user would suffer from or even notice garbage collection latency. Is Rust building up a decent ecosystem now for application programming? When I tried developing in Rust I came to the conclusion that you pay a heavy price for not having a garbage collector. Was I doing it wrong?

Serious question: why not, if the author just knows Rust? Are you so allergic to anything written in Rust? Then get some new pills and ointments because there's going to be more and more of it.

As a Rust developer, let me point out that this is certainly the wrong way to respond when someone criticizes or makes an observation about Rust. Especially when they aren't hostile at all. It's clear from the commenters' question that they have a some preconceptions about Rust for which they are seeking clarifications from other Rust users. This sort of response will only make them give up on Rust due to the toxicity of the community, rather than address any real issues they may be facing.

Re: A cross-platform multi-target dotfiles manager written in Rust

#43

Post by [deleted] »

HackerThemAll wrote: post #36
glutamate wrote: post #6

Serious question: why Rust? Sounds like this is not exactly systems level programming or any user would suffer from or even notice garbage collection latency. Is Rust building up a decent ecosystem now for application programming? When I tried developing in Rust I came to the conclusion that you pay a heavy price for not having a garbage collector. Was I doing it wrong?

Serious question: why not, if the author just knows Rust? Are you so allergic to anything written in Rust? Then get some new pills and ointments because there's going to be more and more of it.

[deleted]

Re: A cross-platform multi-target dotfiles manager written in Rust

#44

Post by HackerThemAll »

goku12 wrote: post #42
HackerThemAll wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: why not, if the author just knows Rust? Are you so allergic to anything written in Rust? Then get some new pills and ointments because there's going to be more and more of it.

As a Rust developer, let me point out that this is certainly the wrong way to respond when someone criticizes or makes an observation about Rust. Especially when they aren't hostile at all. It's clear from the commenters' question that they have a some preconceptions about Rust for which they are seeking clarifications from other Rust users. This sort of response will only make them give up on Rust due to the toxicit…

I am not a Rust programmer and barely know it.

It's just wherever you go, here, Phoronix, Linux Kernel Mailing List for example, the forums are full of haters that just ask "not again, why?" anytime Rust is mentioned. Maybe I've become biased because of that.

Rust helps with performance and security, lots of examples are evidence of that. It's not 100% bulletproof, but nothing is. But it helps. And yet IT people just yell on it for some reason. Like we all should just get stuck forever with C, C++, praise Go, and hate everything else.

Re: A cross-platform multi-target dotfiles manager written in Rust

#45

Post by goku12 »

glutamate wrote: post #6

Serious question: why Rust? Sounds like this is not exactly systems level programming or any user would suffer from or even notice garbage collection latency. Is Rust building up a decent ecosystem now for application programming? When I tried developing in Rust I came to the conclusion that you pay a heavy price for not having a garbage collector. Was I doing it wrong?

Rust is my main programming language and Python the second. Rust is very much useful for application programming - especially these sort of applications. In fact, Rust is the language I sometimes reach for when my shell scripts cross a certain threshold of complexity. Rust even has some tools and an RFC to address the use case of using it like a scripting language (I believe that Go has something similar too).

I don't face much friction from the borrow checker to consider it a 'heavy price for not having a garbage collector'. There are even tools like bacon [1] that can give your real-time feedback on your code. It's even better with the default language server. I sometimes train other developers in Rust - mostly people who are not even into systems programming (JS, Python programmers). However, they don't seem to struggle too much with the borrow checker either. Could you elaborate a bit on what you consider as 'the heavy price'? What sort of issues were you facing frequently?

[1] https://github.com/Canop/bacon

Re: A cross-platform multi-target dotfiles manager written in Rust

#46

Post by metaltyphoon »

MotiBanana wrote: post #30

Pretty cool, I personally just use Stow. 1. git clone my dotfiles repo 2. run `stow .` 3. profit This pretty much guarantees that if my Mac dies today, I can just get up and running in no time on a new machine.

I need something that works across OSes. Chezmoi works pretty well.

Re: A cross-platform multi-target dotfiles manager written in Rust

#47

Post by metaltyphoon »

alkonaut wrote: post #20
spoiler wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of config files begin with a dot themselves or because they are inside dot-names directories (ie xdg config default to ~/.config)

At least on Linux they do yes. But this is cross platform. A Normal total number of dotfiles on a windows system is about 0 or 1.

This is not true. Open your user folder and there will be tons of dotfiles. If you use git with ssh or Rust (.cargo) or C# (.nuget) and many other tools. In fact, even .config is started to show up now.

I guess devs are tired of %APPDATA% ?

Re: A cross-platform multi-target dotfiles manager written in Rust

#48

Post by metaltyphoon »

wesselbindt wrote: post #31
alkonaut wrote: post #10

Is this using ”dotfiles” as a general term for ”text based configuration files”? Is this a thing? I only have two actual dotfiles on my system (git and one more)

Are you using windows? I feel like dotfiles are much more common on unix-like systems. For me I've got dotfiles for zhs, ssh, git, two for my window manager, vim, and much more. I've even got one for nethack. I quite like it, I get new laptops up and running and feeling like home in a matter of minutes.

Even windows, MS made stuff has dotfiles.

Re: A cross-platform multi-target dotfiles manager written in Rust

#49

Post by zsoltkacsandi »

glutamate wrote: post #6

Serious question: why Rust? Sounds like this is not exactly systems level programming or any user would suffer from or even notice garbage collection latency. Is Rust building up a decent ecosystem now for application programming? When I tried developing in Rust I came to the conclusion that you pay a heavy price for not having a garbage collector. Was I doing it wrong?

I am a huge Rust fan and I work with Rust at my job.

I also recently started some open source projects (mostly CLI tools) where I picked Go for one reason: Rust’s learning curve is super steep.

In order to make my projects approachable for other developers Go seemed to be a better choice over Rust.

Re: A cross-platform multi-target dotfiles manager written in Rust

#50

Post by dbalatero »

protortyp wrote: post #29

Completely unrelated, but I recently switched to using nix with home manager and nix-darwin to handle my entire dev setup and dotfiles. If you work a lot in remote dev environments (I use coder a lot at work) that really does the trick.

I had to switch off nix because my company's security controls made it impossible to use :(
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