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I am currently evaluating Rust for a project where speed is important (I am working with graph data in the context of code analysis). Although I find Rust very

I am currently evaluating Rust for a project where speed is important (I am working with graph data in the context of code analysis). Although I find Rust very appealing I still see C++ as the better option, mostly because I fear that Rust would lack good suppport libraries (e.g. for talking to DBs, generating/parsing data formats such as JSON or for generating cryprographic hashes) and that I would end up implementing many of those myself. As of today, many Rust wrapper libraries (e.g. for BerkeleyDB) seem to be written by a single author, which makes me wonder about their stability and maturity even more. I wonder if this is an irrational fear though. Has anyone here implemented a large project with many external dependencies (DB, data serialization, interfacing with other programming languages etc.) in Rust? If so, what were your learnings and would you do it again? I find that the discussion about whether a programming language is "good" or not always focuses on the core features of that language and less on the actual system of support libraries that are available for it and that make it actually useful in a real-world setting.

steveklabnik 11y ago
There are certainly library deficiencies, but we do have good Postgres bindings, and multiple JSON generating/parsing crates. Young ecosystems: lots of opportunity, but 'opportunity' also means pain for those on the other side of the chasm...
smt88 11y ago
I can't answer personally, but these might help: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ffi.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ffi.html https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/3axeu8/whats_the_story_for_binding_to_c_libraries/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/3axeu8/whats_the_stor... I guess the answer is that it depends on what libraries you'll need.
sinatra 11y ago
The examples you gave (DB, JSON, etc) are big enough that there would be decent support for those in Rust. But, your concern is definitely valid for more niche requirements. If your primary concern is availability, stability, maturity etc of a language's ecosystem, then IMHO, you should not choose a language as new as Rust. Rust is currently in the "early adopter" phase, and it is going to go through the same issues (and excitement) that most early adopters do in any field.
- kibwen 11y ago
  I hope this was downvoted by mistake, because it's true that Rust is still in early-adopter territory. It's only been stable for three months! :P
  - 0xFFC 11y ago
    Sadly I have seen people get downvoted just because tell the truth . This is really sad for me because we are in HN , we should not have see this kind of bias in place like HN. p.s. I love rust. p.s.2 . It is completely logical and most of agree rust is in early adopt stage.
JoshTriplett 11y ago
The library support already seems quite excellent; the Cargo ecosystem seems to have most of what I want covered. And for anything that isn't covered, Rust has an exceptionally good FFI layer, so you can just call any available C library directly. It's not by any means a conservative, "safe" choice (in the business sense); you'd be choosing an early-stage language, with everything that implies. But I think it's a reasonable choice for a new project starting today. And the community around it is incredible.
bryanlarsen 11y ago
One advantage of Rust is its excellent C FFI. So as long as your dependencies have a C interface, you should be fine.
weinzierl 11y ago
Although I find Rust very appealing I still see C++ as the better option, mostly because I fear that Rust would lack good suppport libraries (e.g. for talking to DBs, generating/parsing data formats such as JSON or for generating cryprographic hashes) and that I would end up implementing many of those myself. As of today, many Rust wrapper libraries (e.g. for BerkeleyDB) seem to be written by a single author, which makes me wonder about their stability and maturity even more. Rust is in its very beginning[1]. Only time can tell if it will have a rich set of support libraries that are stable and mature.It has one big advantage over C and C++ in this regard. It has a central repository for all the support libraries. I always found it difficult to assess the stability and maturity of libraries for C or C++ found on the internet. Of course there are the standards, like libpng or zlib, and you know they must be good because so many projects use them. For more exotic tasks you are on your own. With a central repository, you can at least estimate the popularity of a certain library. crates.io shows a download count for example. Also many other popular languages have one Java Maven Perl CPAN TeX CTAN PHP PECL, PEAR Python PyPI Ruby RubyGems R CRAN Node.js npm Lua LuaRocks Haskell Hackage [1] I know that Graydon started it over 5 years ago, but from user standpoint Rust is more a child of 2015. [2] https://crates.io/ https://crates.io/
- dman 11y ago
  Package managers have their own problems. Unless they are curated well they lead to many libraries that all claim to do the same thing. I wont name any specific examples, but using some of the above takes a fair amount of judgement in how rock solid the package is.
  - weinzierl 11y ago
    I, for my part, think I'm still better off with a central repository with problems than without one. For Java there are commercial curated Maven repositories and I'm not aware of anything like that for C/C++. So Cargo can be an enabler for Rust in big corp.
    - 11y ago
rattray 11y ago
Experiment and report back! It's entirely possible that the single-author libs are already stable, and simply don't require the work of more contributors because the language makes it easy to get things right & robust the first time. (I don't have experience with Rust, so I'm not saying this is so - just that it's possible).
outworlder 11y ago
> Although I find Rust very appealing I still see C++ as the better option, mostly because I fear that Rust would lack good suppport libraries You don't need everything be pure Rust. Just use C libraries to fill in the gaps.
d_luaz 11y ago
Whenever a new language popup, I always wonder 1) who us it 2) why they use it 3) what they use it for Hopefully more people share their stacks on http://www.stackbus.com/ http://www.stackbus.com/ (FYI, I build it) so that it help others to decide better.
thijsc 11y ago
We encountered this issue because we use MongoDB as our primary database and there was no driver available. I wrote a really nice (if I say so myself) wrapper [1] around the C driver, which really wasn't that much work. I think in general anything you can think of can be used by integrating with a C library. [1] https://github.com/thijsc/mongo-rust-driver https://github.com/thijsc/mongo-rust-driver
- steveklabnik 11y ago
  Mongo has been paying a few interns to write a driver, actually. They presented at the last NYC meetup, and I've been doing code review.
mratzloff 11y ago
What do you mean by "speed", and what is your primary working language?

steveklabnik 11y ago

There are certainly library deficiencies, but we do have good Postgres bindings, and multiple JSON generating/parsing crates. Young ecosystems: lots of opportunity, but 'opportunity' also means pain for those on the other side of the chasm...

smt88 11y ago

I can't answer personally, but these might help: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ffi.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ffi.html https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/3axeu8/whats_the_story_for_binding_to_c_libraries/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/3axeu8/whats_the_stor... I guess the answer is that it depends on what libraries you'll need.

sinatra 11y ago

The examples you gave (DB, JSON, etc) are big enough that there would be decent support for those in Rust. But, your concern is definitely valid for more niche requirements. If your primary concern is availability, stability, maturity etc of a language's ecosystem, then IMHO, you should not choose a language as new as Rust. Rust is currently in the "early adopter" phase, and it is going to go through the same issues (and excitement) that most early adopters do in any field.

kibwen 11y ago
I hope this was downvoted by mistake, because it's true that Rust is still in early-adopter territory. It's only been stable for three months! :P
- 0xFFC 11y ago
  Sadly I have seen people get downvoted just because tell the truth . This is really sad for me because we are in HN , we should not have see this kind of bias in place like HN. p.s. I love rust. p.s.2 . It is completely logical and most of agree rust is in early adopt stage.

JoshTriplett 11y ago

The library support already seems quite excellent; the Cargo ecosystem seems to have most of what I want covered. And for anything that isn't covered, Rust has an exceptionally good FFI layer, so you can just call any available C library directly. It's not by any means a conservative, "safe" choice (in the business sense); you'd be choosing an early-stage language, with everything that implies. But I think it's a reasonable choice for a new project starting today. And the community around it is incredible.

bryanlarsen 11y ago

One advantage of Rust is its excellent C FFI. So as long as your dependencies have a C interface, you should be fine.

weinzierl 11y ago

Although I find Rust very appealing I still see C++ as the better option, mostly because I fear that Rust would lack good suppport libraries (e.g. for talking to DBs, generating/parsing data formats such as JSON or for generating cryprographic hashes) and that I would end up implementing many of those myself. As of today, many Rust wrapper libraries (e.g. for BerkeleyDB) seem to be written by a single author, which makes me wonder about their stability and maturity even more. Rust is in its very beginning[1]. Only time can tell if it will have a rich set of support libraries that are stable and mature.It has one big advantage over C and C++ in this regard. It has a central repository for all the support libraries. I always found it difficult to assess the stability and maturity of libraries for C or C++ found on the internet. Of course there are the standards, like libpng or zlib, and you know they must be good because so many projects use them. For more exotic tasks you are on your own. With a central repository, you can at least estimate the popularity of a certain library. crates.io shows a download count for example. Also many other popular languages have one Java Maven Perl CPAN TeX CTAN PHP PECL, PEAR Python PyPI Ruby RubyGems R CRAN Node.js npm Lua LuaRocks Haskell Hackage [1] I know that Graydon started it over 5 years ago, but from user standpoint Rust is more a child of 2015. [2] https://crates.io/ https://crates.io/

dman 11y ago
Package managers have their own problems. Unless they are curated well they lead to many libraries that all claim to do the same thing. I wont name any specific examples, but using some of the above takes a fair amount of judgement in how rock solid the package is.
- weinzierl 11y ago
  I, for my part, think I'm still better off with a central repository with problems than without one. For Java there are commercial curated Maven repositories and I'm not aware of anything like that for C/C++. So Cargo can be an enabler for Rust in big corp.
  - 11y ago

rattray 11y ago

Experiment and report back! It's entirely possible that the single-author libs are already stable, and simply don't require the work of more contributors because the language makes it easy to get things right & robust the first time. (I don't have experience with Rust, so I'm not saying this is so - just that it's possible).

outworlder 11y ago

> Although I find Rust very appealing I still see C++ as the better option, mostly because I fear that Rust would lack good suppport libraries You don't need everything be pure Rust. Just use C libraries to fill in the gaps.

d_luaz 11y ago

Whenever a new language popup, I always wonder 1) who us it 2) why they use it 3) what they use it for Hopefully more people share their stacks on http://www.stackbus.com/ http://www.stackbus.com/ (FYI, I build it) so that it help others to decide better.

thijsc 11y ago

We encountered this issue because we use MongoDB as our primary database and there was no driver available. I wrote a really nice (if I say so myself) wrapper [1] around the C driver, which really wasn't that much work. I think in general anything you can think of can be used by integrating with a C library. [1] https://github.com/thijsc/mongo-rust-driver https://github.com/thijsc/mongo-rust-driver

steveklabnik 11y ago
Mongo has been paying a few interns to write a driver, actually. They presented at the last NYC meetup, and I've been doing code review.

mratzloff 11y ago

What do you mean by "speed", and what is your primary working language?