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I have trouble understanding what you try to say - but a library like glibc must not have memory corruption problems to start with. Clearly, it seems that curre

by _ph_ 11y ago

I have trouble understanding what you try to say - but a library like glibc must not have memory corruption problems to start with. Clearly, it seems that currently it has those problems. Either you can find maintainers for the C code which will never create a memory corruption problem, or use a tool which assists the maintainers with this. Also, more modern languages than C would in general make the code more maintainable, again helping with weeding out security problems, be they coming from memory corruption or any other cause.

armitron 11y ago
You assume that a glibc written in Rust would not have memory corruption problems. This is a naive assumption. I'll leave you to discover why.
- geofft 11y ago
  If you are not putting forward an argument, then you are not contributing to the conversation, just wasting people's time reading your comment. Therefore I am downvoting you. There are cogent arguments to be made about why Rust isn't a panacea. (I have a few I'm partial to, like integer overflow / truncation bugs.) But if you want people to listen to those arguments, make them.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  It would likely have LESS memory corruption problems, as you're eliminating places in the code that that can occur. The real question is: Does Rust allow you to write less bugs? That's a somewhat open question, but it definitely eliminates certain classes of bugs which are common today.
  - neikos 11y ago
    From intensive but still hobby usage for the past 10+ months I get a feeling that I have a lot /less/ bugs, and if I do have one it is an algorithmical error rather than some UB. This is of course just my view and is heavily skewed towards what I usually do, which is Games and Web Apps. It also depends on how you qualify a bug. (Is a panic a bug? Might or might not be.) To continue that train of thought: I have a feeling Rust will change what one would consider a bug (inside the Rust ecosystem at least). Since you do not actually corrupt memory most of the time (minus unsafe shenanigans) you actually do not get a lot of cases where you get a crash and you don't know why. RUST_BACKTRACE always told me where something panicked which is pretty much always sufficient to debug since you just have to verify your invariants you thought were correct when you for example 'unwrap' or call panic! yourself.

by _ph_ 11y ago

armitron 11y ago

You assume that a glibc written in Rust would not have memory corruption problems. This is a naive assumption. I'll leave you to discover why.

geofft 11y ago
If you are not putting forward an argument, then you are not contributing to the conversation, just wasting people's time reading your comment. Therefore I am downvoting you. There are cogent arguments to be made about why Rust isn't a panacea. (I have a few I'm partial to, like integer overflow / truncation bugs.) But if you want people to listen to those arguments, make them.
Someone1234 11y ago
It would likely have LESS memory corruption problems, as you're eliminating places in the code that that can occur. The real question is: Does Rust allow you to write less bugs? That's a somewhat open question, but it definitely eliminates certain classes of bugs which are common today.
- neikos 11y ago
  From intensive but still hobby usage for the past 10+ months I get a feeling that I have a lot /less/ bugs, and if I do have one it is an algorithmical error rather than some UB. This is of course just my view and is heavily skewed towards what I usually do, which is Games and Web Apps. It also depends on how you qualify a bug. (Is a panic a bug? Might or might not be.) To continue that train of thought: I have a feeling Rust will change what one would consider a bug (inside the Rust ecosystem at least). Since you do not actually corrupt memory most of the time (minus unsafe shenanigans) you actually do not get a lot of cases where you get a crash and you don't know why. RUST_BACKTRACE always told me where something panicked which is pretty much always sufficient to debug since you just have to verify your invariants you thought were correct when you for example 'unwrap' or call panic! yourself.