4 ms·

to his credit, xion recommended that crate authors not "build castles on foundations of sand," and is simply commenting on the fact that a lot of people are app

by bronz 10y ago

to his credit, xion recommended that crate authors not "build castles on foundations of sand," and is simply commenting on the fact that a lot of people are apparently doing it.

kaoD 10y ago
I've been following Rust since way before 1.0 and one of my fears when 1.0 was announced was that it seemed rushed. On the other hand, I completely understood the need for stabilization for people that actually use Rust in production (i.e. not me). People aren't building castles on foundations of sand. They are building sandcastles, experimenting and building along as the language and ecosystem evolves and matures. Every nightly-only crate should be regarded as highly unstable and experimental. If a lot of people are building sandcastles surely that means that the language wasn't yet ready for that particular castle being made of stone. And this is a good thing! AFAICT without nightly-only crates being so pervasive due to compiler plugins, Macros 1.1 wouldn't be so close to stabilization. Isn't that exactly what nightly is for? If some nightly feature is used a lot, that means it should promptly be polished and stabilized. At such an early stage in the language's life the evolution is mutual. The development team responding timely to such issues is just another sign that Rust is a healthy (even if in its infancy) language. Stable Rust is dead, long live Stable Rust!
- echelon 10y ago
  You have correctly framed this situation. The linked article, however, was a complete misrepresentation as it declared, > Stable Rust is dead. Nightly Rust is the only Rust. Many people and orgs are using Rust stable. In production. Nightly is a playground. We shouldn't misinform those unfamiliar with the language or give them the opinion that Rust isn't well managed. Doing so can steer new talent and interest away. We are all relying on newcomers for more widespread adoption and faster growth of our community. The author probably didn't mean any harm, but I feel like the article is disingenuous and should have a retraction before it causes any confusion.
- bronz 10y ago
  this is such a good response. i dont think xion would disagree with the notion that rust is well on its way to being great.
kibwen 10y ago
I'll ask for a citation for "a lot of people". The only evidence given is a single web framework that was announced 24 hours ago, by someone who up to now is entirely unknown in the Rust community. The only two projects in Rust that run on nightly are Serde and Diesel, and those do already also run on stable, thanks to deliberate effort from their authors, and they will both be completely stable as of Rust 1.15 in February. (And for the record, I think Rocket is the perfect sort of project for helping us get experience with using unstable features, and helping us prioritize which should be stabilized first. I don't want to knock it just for using unstable features! People are too eager to forget that, as of two years ago, every Rust project was de facto unstable, and we've been making steady progress toward a majority-stable ecosystem since then, as expected.)
- metajack 10y ago
  You forgot Servo in your list, which runs only on specific nightlies, though we do try to make most of the dependencies buildable on stable.
  - kibwen 10y ago
    I was referring specifically to libraries and frameworks that would require common end users to have a nightly compiler to "infect" their own code. I'm more-or-less fine with Servo being a heavy user of nightly given how much that helps us test new language features on a, er, captive audience. :P

by bronz 10y ago

to his credit, xion recommended that crate authors not "build castles on foundations of sand," and is simply commenting on the fact that a lot of people are apparently doing it.

kaoD 10y ago

I've been following Rust since way before 1.0 and one of my fears when 1.0 was announced was that it seemed rushed. On the other hand, I completely understood the need for stabilization for people that actually use Rust in production (i.e. not me). People aren't building castles on foundations of sand. They are building sandcastles, experimenting and building along as the language and ecosystem evolves and matures. Every nightly-only crate should be regarded as highly unstable and experimental. If a lot of people are building sandcastles surely that means that the language wasn't yet ready for that particular castle being made of stone. And this is a good thing! AFAICT without nightly-only crates being so pervasive due to compiler plugins, Macros 1.1 wouldn't be so close to stabilization. Isn't that exactly what nightly is for? If some nightly feature is used a lot, that means it should promptly be polished and stabilized. At such an early stage in the language's life the evolution is mutual. The development team responding timely to such issues is just another sign that Rust is a healthy (even if in its infancy) language. Stable Rust is dead, long live Stable Rust!

echelon 10y ago
You have correctly framed this situation. The linked article, however, was a complete misrepresentation as it declared, > Stable Rust is dead. Nightly Rust is the only Rust. Many people and orgs are using Rust stable. In production. Nightly is a playground. We shouldn't misinform those unfamiliar with the language or give them the opinion that Rust isn't well managed. Doing so can steer new talent and interest away. We are all relying on newcomers for more widespread adoption and faster growth of our community. The author probably didn't mean any harm, but I feel like the article is disingenuous and should have a retraction before it causes any confusion.
bronz 10y ago
this is such a good response. i dont think xion would disagree with the notion that rust is well on its way to being great.

kibwen 10y ago

I'll ask for a citation for "a lot of people". The only evidence given is a single web framework that was announced 24 hours ago, by someone who up to now is entirely unknown in the Rust community. The only two projects in Rust that run on nightly are Serde and Diesel, and those do already also run on stable, thanks to deliberate effort from their authors, and they will both be completely stable as of Rust 1.15 in February. (And for the record, I think Rocket is the perfect sort of project for helping us get experience with using unstable features, and helping us prioritize which should be stabilized first. I don't want to knock it just for using unstable features! People are too eager to forget that, as of two years ago, every Rust project was de facto unstable, and we've been making steady progress toward a majority-stable ecosystem since then, as expected.)

metajack 10y ago
You forgot Servo in your list, which runs only on specific nightlies, though we do try to make most of the dependencies buildable on stable.
- kibwen 10y ago
  I was referring specifically to libraries and frameworks that would require common end users to have a nightly compiler to "infect" their own code. I'm more-or-less fine with Servo being a heavy user of nightly given how much that helps us test new language features on a, er, captive audience. :P