24 ms·

the choice is also between a good language and a bad one. Those two choices are not exclusive, and choosing good practices is not the end of the road for the q

by LBarret 11y ago

the choice is also between a good language and a bad one. Those two choices are not exclusive, and choosing good practices is not the end of the road for the quest for quality.

acconsta 11y ago
No. There's only one language you can write a patch for the Linux network stack in — C. "Move to Rust!" is not a productive or helpful suggestion, unless you have an massive army of programmers ready to port Linux to Rust.
- kibwen 11y ago
  You can write a patch for the Linux network stack in any language you want. Whether Linus will merge it is a different matter. :P EDIT: Downvotes eh? Then I suppose I'll state outright what I left implicit: Linux is not inextricably tied to any single language, and it's a strawman to suppose that any attempt to integrate Rust with Linux would first have to reinvent the universe from scratch. Rust has excellent interoperability with C (though, notably, unions are iffy), and it's common to write Rust code that gets called from C with C being none the wiser.
  - acconsta 11y ago
    For the record, I don't have enough karma to downvote. >Linux is not inextricably tied to any single language It is pretty tightly coupled to GCC, which, as you know, is a C compiler. Some people are working on supporting Clang, but last I heard they haven't succeeded. It would certainly be interesting to see someone link Linux to Rust code though.
    - kibwen 11y ago
      The C ABI is de facto standardized, the compiler in use doesn't matter. Rust code can expose a C ABI and be compiled into a linkable artifact, and that means that C code can use it as though it were an artifact compiled by any C compiler.
      - acconsta 11y ago
        It's not quite plug-and-play, but it does seem like there's been some progress. https://lwn.net/Articles/644681/ https://lwn.net/Articles/644681/
    - zurn 11y ago
      Linux has been built with small modifications under tcc, icc and llvm. Linus doesn't want it to be tightly coupled to GCC. The LLVM build patchset is being actively maintained, here hare slides from February: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/2015-Collab-LLVMLinux_0.pdf https://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides...
      - acconsta 11y ago
        Yeah, I get the impression Linus fucking hates GCC :P That's good though. Compiler freedom is better for everyone.

by LBarret 11y ago

the choice is also between a good language and a bad one. Those two choices are not exclusive, and choosing good practices is not the end of the road for the quest for quality.

acconsta 11y ago

No. There's only one language you can write a patch for the Linux network stack in — C. "Move to Rust!" is not a productive or helpful suggestion, unless you have an massive army of programmers ready to port Linux to Rust.

kibwen 11y ago
You can write a patch for the Linux network stack in any language you want. Whether Linus will merge it is a different matter. :P EDIT: Downvotes eh? Then I suppose I'll state outright what I left implicit: Linux is not inextricably tied to any single language, and it's a strawman to suppose that any attempt to integrate Rust with Linux would first have to reinvent the universe from scratch. Rust has excellent interoperability with C (though, notably, unions are iffy), and it's common to write Rust code that gets called from C with C being none the wiser.
- acconsta 11y ago
  For the record, I don't have enough karma to downvote. >Linux is not inextricably tied to any single language It is pretty tightly coupled to GCC, which, as you know, is a C compiler. Some people are working on supporting Clang, but last I heard they haven't succeeded. It would certainly be interesting to see someone link Linux to Rust code though.
  - kibwen 11y ago
    The C ABI is de facto standardized, the compiler in use doesn't matter. Rust code can expose a C ABI and be compiled into a linkable artifact, and that means that C code can use it as though it were an artifact compiled by any C compiler.
    - acconsta 11y ago
      It's not quite plug-and-play, but it does seem like there's been some progress. https://lwn.net/Articles/644681/ https://lwn.net/Articles/644681/
  - zurn 11y ago
    Linux has been built with small modifications under tcc, icc and llvm. Linus doesn't want it to be tightly coupled to GCC. The LLVM build patchset is being actively maintained, here hare slides from February: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/2015-Collab-LLVMLinux_0.pdf https://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides...
    - acconsta 11y ago
      Yeah, I get the impression Linus fucking hates GCC :P That's good though. Compiler freedom is better for everyone.