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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

#61

Post by matheusmoreira »

bArray wrote: post #54

Maybe I'm just old and moany, and I need to step aside for bigger and better things such as Rust. But. Now rather than needing to understand just C to work on Git/kernel, you now need to also know Rust. The toolchain complexity is increasing, and the mix of these languages increases the barrier to entry. I'm highly invested into Git, having learned the tooling and having a significant number of projects constructed w…

I've also sent some patches git's way and I can't say I'm thrilled about being forced to (finally) learn Rust if I want to contribute again in the future. I guess I'm outdated...

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

#62

Post by Luker88 »

bArray wrote: post #54

Maybe I'm just old and moany, and I need to step aside for bigger and better things such as Rust. But. Now rather than needing to understand just C to work on Git/kernel, you now need to also know Rust. The toolchain complexity is increasing, and the mix of these languages increases the barrier to entry. I'm highly invested into Git, having learned the tooling and having a significant number of projects constructed w…

AFAIK git already uses multiple languages, github says its 50% C, 38% shell, 4% perl, then 4% TCL python 1%

So "another language" here probably does not weigh as much, especially considering perl/TCL are the weirder one there.

But for big projects like linux and git, this could actually be a consolidation step: you spent decades growing, hacking things on top of each other.

You have mostly figured out what this project is and where it is going, it's time to think about safety, performance and remove old hacks.

Rust feels like a good fit, imho.

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

#63

Post by halffullbrain »

kstrauser wrote: post #25
lloydatkinson wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you're someone very familiar with Ansible, what are your thoughts on it in regards to IBM's imminent complete absorption of RedHat? I can't imagine Ansible, or any other RedHat product, doing well with that.

I wouldn’t say I’m very familiar. I don’t use it extensively anymore, and not at all at work. But in general, I can’t imagine a way in which IBM’s own corporate culture could contribute positively to any FOSS projects if they removed the RedHat veneer. Not saying it’s impossible, just that my imagination is more limited than the idea requires.

IBM has been, and still is, a big contributor to a bunch of Eclipse projects, as their own tools build on those. The people there were both really skilled, friendly and professional. Different divisions and departments can have huge cultural differences and priorities, obviously, but “IBM” doesn’t automatically mean bad for OSS projects.

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

#64

Post by ksynwa »

jmillikin wrote: post #9
politelemon wrote: post #2

> Introducing Rust is impossible for some platforms and hard for others. Please could someone elaborate on this.

There's at least one proprietary platform that supports Git built by via a vendor-provided C compiler, but for which no public documentation exists and therefore no LLVM support is possible. Ctrl+F for "NonStop" in https://lwn.net/Articles/998115/

Won't someome think of the financial sector

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

#65

Post by steveklabnik »

antihero wrote: post #17
jmillikin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's at least one proprietary platform that supports Git built by via a vendor-provided C compiler, but for which no public documentation exists and therefore no LLVM support is possible. Ctrl+F for "NonStop" in https://lwn.net/Articles/998115/

Shouldn't these platforms work on getting Rust to support it rather than have our tools limited by what they can consume? https://github.com/Rust-GCC/gccrs

That platform doesn’t support GCC either.

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

#66

Post by saghm »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #61
bArray wrote: post #54

Maybe I'm just old and moany, and I need to step aside for bigger and better things such as Rust. But. Now rather than needing to understand just C to work on Git/kernel, you now need to also know Rust. The toolchain complexity is increasing, and the mix of these languages increases the barrier to entry. I'm highly invested into Git, having learned the tooling and having a significant number of projects constructed w…

I've also sent some patches git's way and I can't say I'm thrilled about being forced to (finally) learn Rust if I want to contribute again in the future. I guess I'm outdated...

They're proposing porting over one small piece that has no dependencies and exposing it to the rest of git via a C interface. Yes, they'll presumably port more over in the future if it goes well, but it's a gross exaggeration to characterize this as somehow making it impossible to contribute without knowing Rust.

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

#67

Post by milch »

kstrauser wrote: post #51
Hizonner wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sucks to be that platform? Seriously, I guess they just have to live without git if they're not willing to take on support for its tool chain. Nobody cares about NonStop but the very small number of people who use it... who are, by the way, very well capable of paying for it.

I strongly agree. I read some of the counter arguments, like this will make it too hard for NonStop devs to use git, and maybe make them not use it at all. Those don’t resonate with me at all. So what? What value does them using git provide to the git developers? I couldn’t care less if NonStop devs can use my own software at all. And since they’re exclusively at giant, well-financed corporations, they can crack open…

"You have to backport security fixes for your own tiny platform because your build environment doesn't support our codebase or make your build environment support our codebase" seems like a 100% reasonable stance to me

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

#68

Post by steveklabnik »

maximilianburke wrote: post #31
jmillikin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's at least one proprietary platform that supports Git built by via a vendor-provided C compiler, but for which no public documentation exists and therefore no LLVM support is possible. Ctrl+F for "NonStop" in https://lwn.net/Articles/998115/

Maybe they can resurrect the C backend for LLVM and run that through their proprietary compilers? It's probably not straightforward but the users of NonStop hardware have a lot of money so I'm sure they could find a way.

Given that the maintainer previously said they had tried to pay to get GCC and LLVM ported multiple times, all of which failed, money doesn’t seem to have helped.

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

#69

Post by bArray »

Luker88 wrote: post #62
bArray wrote: post #54

Maybe I'm just old and moany, and I need to step aside for bigger and better things such as Rust. But. Now rather than needing to understand just C to work on Git/kernel, you now need to also know Rust. The toolchain complexity is increasing, and the mix of these languages increases the barrier to entry. I'm highly invested into Git, having learned the tooling and having a significant number of projects constructed w…

AFAIK git already uses multiple languages, github says its 50% C, 38% shell, 4% perl, then 4% TCL python 1% So "another language" here probably does not weigh as much, especially considering perl/TCL are the weirder one there. But for big projects like linux and git, this could actually be a consolidation step: you spent decades growing, hacking things on top of each other. You have mostly figured out what this proje…

I did check this out. The shell, perl and python are likely for scripting and not used during runtime. TCL is likely some form of dynamic scripting.

I think we also have to be honest about what the project here is too, it's not to have both C and Rust together, but to replace all C with Rust. In which case, it probably makes sense to just clone to repo and work on a fork like they did with SSH.

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