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Zig → Rust porting guide

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Re: Zig → Rust porting guide

#531

Post by tracker1 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #361
alethic wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of this post, that's absolutely hilarious they're vibe-porting their Zig codebase to Rust . I love Rust, but you couldn't pick a language with slower compile times... XD

Compiling Rust is actually quite fast in my experience. The problem with many Rust projects is that they pull in dependencies left, right, and center. Pulling in Tokio makes your project compile an entire thread management system even if you're just compiling Hello World, and simple oneliners containing macros can easily spread out into dozens of lines of code each. Linking is also slow, and the extreme amounts of me…

Having a gen 5 nvme helps significantly.

Re: Zig → Rust porting guide

#533

Post by Perz1val »

selectnull wrote: post #289

Why not rewrite claude-code in Rust? So, Anthropic acquires Bun team because claude-code uses Bun. They port Bun from Zig to Rust presumably because Rust "is better" (imagine big air quotes here). Again presumably, they want to make claude-code "better". Why make it so complicated? With all the power of LLMs they have, surely they can make claude-code the best possible by writting it in Rust directly.

Because afaik claude code is react rendered as TUI. They must really want react. I guess that happens to ones brain on too much ai

Re: Zig → Rust porting guide

#534

Post by SergeAx »

punkbit wrote: post #516
SergeAx wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a topic starter, and I had no emotional response, was just being curious. Never expected it will land at HN #1. I specifically posted the link to the first commit and not to the whole branch, because currently the prompt is the most interesting part.

An original topic starter? I'm pretty sure that this was originally posted on X by someone else, as I commented there, and minutes after, it was copied and put here on HN with the twisted title; the original was more of a "question, surprise tone"

This topic starter. I saw a post on Twitter in "for you" feed, verified it, found an interesting bit (rewriting prompt) and started a topic on HN. Like I said, I never expected it to hit #1.

Re: Zig → Rust porting guide

#535

Post by xboxnolifes »

eigilsagafos wrote: post #475
magicmicah85 wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The branch name is "claude/phase-a-port", there was zero indication this was an experiment until Jarred commented. The more accurate title might have simply been "there is a branch in the official repo of bun describing a port to rust from zig". No amount of soft titles would have prevented the discussion. People have their opinions about Bun, about Zig, about Rust and it's all going to come out in a discussion board…

Can’t every branch be considered an experiment? I have a ton of experimental branches that I don’t label «experimental». One of the reasons you use git…

If every branch is experimental. Then there is no need to put ut in the title.

Re: Zig → Rust porting guide

#536

Post by slanterns »

DeathArrow wrote: post #246
andkenneth wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They recently tried to upstream an improvement to zig, but were prevented from doing so because zig has a hard and fast "no AI code" rule. Whether you think this response is trying to put pressure on zig or whether they're just moving for practical reasons is up to you. It's probably a bit of both.

>They recently tried to upstream an improvement to zig, but were prevented from doing so because zig has a hard and fast "no AI code" rule. And will Rust team accept their vibe coded patches?

It depends: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/155403#issuecomment-4...

Re: Zig → Rust porting guide

#537

Post by swyx »

sufficientsoup wrote: post #329
swyx wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

care to attempt a top 3 differences that someone doing this kind of rewrite should know? (would teach me a little about Zig, about which i know 0)

Wouldn’t call myself an expert in either, but I think 2 things stand out far more than anything else: 1. Rust is effectively as strict as can be in terms of ownership. In Zig you can just allocate some memory and then start slinging pointers (or slices) all over. If you’re doing this then you’re presumably doing it for mutability and you don’t strictly know where that pointer ends up once you’ve passed it on. 2. Rust…

great answers! exp the recap last line

Re: Zig → Rust porting guide

#538

Post by skywhopper »

sarreph wrote: post #349
Jarred wrote: post #319

I work on Bun and this is my branch This whole thread is an overreaction. 302 comments about code that does not work. We haven’t committed to rewriting. There’s a very high chance all this code gets thrown out completely. I’m curious to see what a working version of this looks, what it feels like, how it performs and if/how hard it’d be to get it to pass Bun’s test suite and be maintainable. I’d like to be able to co…

It is a pity that you can't make an experimental commit on an experimental branch without igniting a fire of delirium through some people who -- if they were able to put their emotional response aside for a minute and could weigh this up on the basis of merit -- would probably agree with the motivations for researching this approach. > if/how hard it’d be to get it to pass Bun’s test suite and be maintainable Every m…

It’s annoying for the team members I suppose, but to be fair, if you’re working on a high-profile open source project, owned by one of the most hyped companies in the world, and your branches are public, it’s probably a good idea to be clear in the branch naming and supplemental files if you’re just “experimenting”.

By working in public on a popular open source project, you are communicating intent and purpose to your users and the general public through your commit messages, branch names, and documentation. You’ll save yourself a lot of grief if you act accordingly.

Re: Zig → Rust porting guide

#539

Post by skywhopper »

mi_lk wrote: post #454
magicmicah85 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title is "Bun is being ported from Zig to Rust". The docs/PORTING.MD starts with "Zig → Rust porting guide" I don't think the tone was the problem.

Imaging title it "Bun is being ported from Zig to Rust in an experimental branch" though. Not enough drama with that

How would an outside observer know it’s an experiment?

Re: Zig → Rust porting guide

#540

Post by merlindru »

wtetzner wrote: post #392
merlindru wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think most JavaScript devs know how to read C code, let alone assembly, so I think the comparison is apt. Is it not?

The JavaScript developers are checking in JavaScript code that they ostensibly understand. That is not the same as prompting an LLM to generate Zig that they don't understand, and expecting someone to merge it.

ah, i see what you're saying. fair point! though the argument was that LLMs essentially are a yet higher level programming language (or, rather, let you write in a higher level language).
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