7 ms·

The next version of Fedora picks up Rust

91 points by neverminder 10y ago

0xmohit 10y ago
It may be worthwhile trying out Fedora. I haven't used it in years now. Good to see that they are making a conscious effort to keep a number of compilers/toolchains updated. Fedora aims to include Rust 1.11 this time around. Google's Go will be boosted to the recently released 1.7, Node.js will be upgraded to version 6.x, the PHP stack will now run the better-performing version 7.0, and Ruby on Rails is being bumped to version 5, which has been released after many years of development. Erlang and Haskell, two major specimens of the functional language world, are also getting their Fedora-bundled compilers upgraded to newer versions.
- steveklabnik 10y ago
  We've been doing lots of work in recent Rust releases to help make packaging for distros easier; the bootstrap process changed in 1.10, for example. It's going to become extremely important over the next year or so, especially as Firefox picks up more Rust code. Even if distros don't start packaging other Rust programs, that's a big one. Managing distro release cycles, Firefox release cycles, and Rust release cycles, and the various dependencies between them gets complex.
  - 0xmohit 10y ago
    Yes, have noticed that. Usually distros lag a fair bit in keeping up-to-date on common tools/utilities; I wish the popular ones like Ubuntu (Canonical) do better in keeping the LTS versions more updated. You guys have also been doing a terrific job with the documentation. Awesome!
Bino 10y ago
Gash, I feel so dirty everything when going to these "news sites"... Where can I find some real news about this?
- neverminder 10y ago
  Minus trivia: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/25/ChangeSet#Rust_Compiler https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/25/ChangeSet#Rust_Co...
JohnStrange 10y ago
>You know a language has arrived when its toolchain ships as a standard component with operating systems. Like Ada, right? ducksforcover
- kevinmgranger 10y ago
  dnf search brainfuck brainfuck.x86_64 : Brainfuck interpreter
adelarsq 10y ago
Hoping Debian to follow the same path [EDIT] Wow! https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rustc https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rustc
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  Debian packaged rustc since 1.0 (May 2015): http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs/main/r/rustc/unstable_changelog http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs/main/r/rust... . The Debian maintainers have been working with the Rust upstream developers to improve the ability to package it, and that work has helped other distributions start to package it as well.
bluejekyll 10y ago
> Fedora's rationale for including Rust stems from both the language's growing popularity and its potential relevance to Fedora's user base. Maybe this makes me unique, but I don't think so; unless the tool is absolutely required for the operation of the system, why include it? I always find that I need to override any installed compilers/languages with my own. In addition, I usually forgo using the system paths for ones I manage on my own. I'm never sure if my upgrading to versions I want will break some component in the system. This happened to many times to me, so I started installing everything to my local user on the machine. Rustup in rust is exactly what I want. Similarly in Python, virtual environments, in Java I always install the jdk to a local bin, to get a specific version. Don't get me wrong, I wish everyone were using Rust, I just don't know how useful the system install version is.
- pm215 10y ago
  On the other hand my general view is that I will always prefer the system install of a language environment, because I know the distro is going to take care of ensuring it works with the distro config, updating it with security bugs and making sure it doesn't break when I update the distro in future. In fact "doesn't exist in distros yet" is one of the major reasons I haven't got round to investigating Rust yet. And the distro themselves will want to be using their own packaged version of the language to build any other programs that are written in that language, for reproducibility reasons.
- pm215 10y ago
  On the other hand my general view is that I will always prefer the system install of a language environment, because I know the distro is going to take care of ensuring it works with the distro config, updating it with security bugs and making sure it doesn't break when I update the distro in future. In fact "doesn't exist in distros yet" is one of the major reasons I haven't got round to investigating Rust yet.
- anonbanker 10y ago
  Remember that the same thing happened with Mono; it began being included long before there were .Net apps in the default release.
anonbanker 10y ago
Great, now we're trapped into Fedora's release cycle. People will now be building to Fedora's released version, rather than the latest stable build.
- steveklabnik 10y ago
  It is unclear if Fedora (and other distros) will allow for updating within cycles or not.

91 points by neverminder 10y ago

It may be worthwhile trying out Fedora. I haven't used it in years now. Good to see that they are making a conscious effort to keep a number of compilers/toolchains updated. Fedora aims to include Rust 1.11 this time around. Google's Go will be boosted to the recently released 1.7, Node.js will be upgraded to version 6.x, the PHP stack will now run the better-performing version 7.0, and Ruby on Rails is being bumped to version 5, which has been released after many years of development. Erlang and Haskell, two major specimens of the functional language world, are also getting their Fedora-bundled compilers upgraded to newer versions.

steveklabnik 10y ago
We've been doing lots of work in recent Rust releases to help make packaging for distros easier; the bootstrap process changed in 1.10, for example. It's going to become extremely important over the next year or so, especially as Firefox picks up more Rust code. Even if distros don't start packaging other Rust programs, that's a big one. Managing distro release cycles, Firefox release cycles, and Rust release cycles, and the various dependencies between them gets complex.
- 0xmohit 10y ago
  Yes, have noticed that. Usually distros lag a fair bit in keeping up-to-date on common tools/utilities; I wish the popular ones like Ubuntu (Canonical) do better in keeping the LTS versions more updated. You guys have also been doing a terrific job with the documentation. Awesome!

Bino 10y ago

Gash, I feel so dirty everything when going to these "news sites"... Where can I find some real news about this?

neverminder 10y ago
Minus trivia: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/25/ChangeSet#Rust_Compiler https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/25/ChangeSet#Rust_Co...

JohnStrange 10y ago

>You know a language has arrived when its toolchain ships as a standard component with operating systems. Like Ada, right? ducksforcover

kevinmgranger 10y ago
dnf search brainfuck brainfuck.x86_64 : Brainfuck interpreter

adelarsq 10y ago

Hoping Debian to follow the same path [EDIT] Wow! https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rustc https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rustc

JoshTriplett 10y ago
Debian packaged rustc since 1.0 (May 2015): http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs/main/r/rustc/unstable_changelog http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs/main/r/rust... . The Debian maintainers have been working with the Rust upstream developers to improve the ability to package it, and that work has helped other distributions start to package it as well.

bluejekyll 10y ago

> Fedora's rationale for including Rust stems from both the language's growing popularity and its potential relevance to Fedora's user base. Maybe this makes me unique, but I don't think so; unless the tool is absolutely required for the operation of the system, why include it? I always find that I need to override any installed compilers/languages with my own. In addition, I usually forgo using the system paths for ones I manage on my own. I'm never sure if my upgrading to versions I want will break some component in the system. This happened to many times to me, so I started installing everything to my local user on the machine. Rustup in rust is exactly what I want. Similarly in Python, virtual environments, in Java I always install the jdk to a local bin, to get a specific version. Don't get me wrong, I wish everyone were using Rust, I just don't know how useful the system install version is.

pm215 10y ago
On the other hand my general view is that I will always prefer the system install of a language environment, because I know the distro is going to take care of ensuring it works with the distro config, updating it with security bugs and making sure it doesn't break when I update the distro in future. In fact "doesn't exist in distros yet" is one of the major reasons I haven't got round to investigating Rust yet. And the distro themselves will want to be using their own packaged version of the language to build any other programs that are written in that language, for reproducibility reasons.
pm215 10y ago
On the other hand my general view is that I will always prefer the system install of a language environment, because I know the distro is going to take care of ensuring it works with the distro config, updating it with security bugs and making sure it doesn't break when I update the distro in future. In fact "doesn't exist in distros yet" is one of the major reasons I haven't got round to investigating Rust yet.
anonbanker 10y ago
Remember that the same thing happened with Mono; it began being included long before there were .Net apps in the default release.

anonbanker 10y ago

Great, now we're trapped into Fedora's release cycle. People will now be building to Fedora's released version, rather than the latest stable build.

steveklabnik 10y ago
It is unclear if Fedora (and other distros) will allow for updating within cycles or not.