8 ms·

The next survey should ask which nightly-only features are keeping them on nightly. :)

Manishearth 9y ago
From asking around (totally unscientific, but I've been asking this question for a while now), it seems like most folks develop for stable but use nightly for incremental compilation, RLS, and/or clippy. The first two are on the path to stable in the next few releases, and the last one is starting to go in that direction too, but will take longer.
- gcp 9y ago
  clippy for me, yes.
- ekidd 9y ago
  Yes, this is exactly how we do it: Our build systems all run stable, but developers use nightly for RLS and clippy. We did have one developer who was excited about using Rocket (which he said was much better than the other Rust web frameworks he had tried), but we decided that the grief of building production code on unstable wasn't worth it. (We're also holding off on directly using futures in any major way until the developer ergonomics and especially error messages get better.)
JoshTriplett 9y ago
Among other things, embedded support; if you want to compile out the standard library, no_std effectively requires nightly right now. Many embedded developers are stuck on nightly for that reason. I've seen some proposed solutions in progress for that, at the moment, such as standardizing panic_fmt (needed to write no_std applications).
- dbcurtis 9y ago
  Interesting. I haven't tried Rust yet, but it is on my "to learn what all the fuss is about" list. The main reason I'm interested is for embedded.
  - JoshTriplett 9y ago
    It works very well for embedded; the only problem is that to build a complete OS-style image, you tend to need nightly, either for no_std or to build your own std/core for the target platform.
- bsder 9y ago
  Do the Rust embedded developers all hang on an IRC room or something?
  - steveklabnik 9y ago
    There's #rust-osdev (which has been pretty quiet lately) and #rust-embedded at least; I think Tock has their own channel too?
pc2g4d 9y ago
For me it's usually little things like `TryFrom`. Bits of API that aren't stabilized.
david-cako 9y ago
And the one after on what percentage of software developers feel a disturbing lack of politics in programming language development. I love rust, but the community's politics is very odd to me.
- kbenson 9y ago
  Politics as in national politics, or politics as in bureaucracy and people working the system for benefit (e.g. company politics)?
  - david-cako 9y ago
    Social politics. Just odd socially-charged community management and documentation. I get a strong impression that the lead contributors (perhaps it's a mozilla cultural affect?) are very interested in pushing their equality agenda. Not that I don't subscribe to it in theory, it's just very tacky to me.
    - gcp 9y ago
      Got any examples where you think this shines through from the docs? Never noticed it. (I could easily imagine it in the community management so I'll take your word for that, but I've only really interacted with the IRC channels where this wasn't an issue)
      - Ruud-v-A 9y ago
        Not from the docs, but a pretty clear community example is that tickets for RustFest are more expensive for people who don’t belong to an underrepresented group. Edit: replaced “minority” with “underrepresented group”, as that is the language used on the website [1]. [1]: http://blog.rustfest.eu/this-week-in-rustfest-5-tickets-diversity http://blog.rustfest.eu/this-week-in-rustfest-5-tickets-dive...
        kbenson 9y ago
        > Not from the docs, but a pretty clear community example is that tickets for RustFest are more expensive for people who don’t belong to a minority. Having just looked this up because I wasn't aware of it, I wouldn't classify that statement as true. They allow/ask for donations to help people from diverse locations attend. https://ti.to/asquera-event-ug/rustfest-zurich/ https://ti.to/asquera-event-ug/rustfest-zurich/ NOTE: THIS IS NOT A CONFERENCE TICKET. Support us bringing the opportunity to attend RustFest to more people around the globe who otherwise couldn't afford it. Anything you offer here will go into our diversity pool with the sole purpose of helping people from underrepresented groups attend RustFest. That doesn't mean minorities necessarily, and even if it did, it doesn't mean everyone in that group gets a cheaper ticket. From the first sentence though, it seems obvious they are trying to get diverse nationalities, not necessarily diverse ethnicity from the hosting country.
erickt 9y ago
Core/Community team that helped design the survey here. We actually did ask about this, but unfortunately it's quite time consuming to process through all the free text entry like this one. Some of the popular things people want from nightly are Clippy, impl traits, RLS, SIMD, and compiler plugins, which isn't surprising. It'll take some time to dig through the rest of the comments to see if there is anything unexpected. I'm hoping to do follow on posts as we go, but no promises :)
- pc2g4d 9y ago
  Finding most frequent words/phrases will tell you a lot. There's also topic modeling if you have enough text.
Perceptes 9y ago
The requirement of a nightly compiler for many of my projects has been my biggest problem with Rust for both surveys so far. I recently made an issue for my largest Rust project, Ruma, that enumerates all the things we're waiting on from the nightly compiler, as well as other library/ecosystem maturity issues. Just in case anyone is curious what some specific problems are for a real project: https://github.com/ruma/ruma/issues/189 https://github.com/ruma/ruma/issues/189
frankmcsherry 9y ago
That Rust binaries and Rust shared libraries use different allocators on stable, making FFI .. awkward.

From asking around (totally unscientific, but I've been asking this question for a while now), it seems like most folks develop for stable but use nightly for incremental compilation, RLS, and/or clippy. The first two are on the path to stable in the next few releases, and the last one is starting to go in that direction too, but will take longer.

gcp 9y ago
clippy for me, yes.
ekidd 9y ago
Yes, this is exactly how we do it: Our build systems all run stable, but developers use nightly for RLS and clippy. We did have one developer who was excited about using Rocket (which he said was much better than the other Rust web frameworks he had tried), but we decided that the grief of building production code on unstable wasn't worth it. (We're also holding off on directly using futures in any major way until the developer ergonomics and especially error messages get better.)

JoshTriplett 9y ago

Among other things, embedded support; if you want to compile out the standard library, no_std effectively requires nightly right now. Many embedded developers are stuck on nightly for that reason. I've seen some proposed solutions in progress for that, at the moment, such as standardizing panic_fmt (needed to write no_std applications).

dbcurtis 9y ago
Interesting. I haven't tried Rust yet, but it is on my "to learn what all the fuss is about" list. The main reason I'm interested is for embedded.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  It works very well for embedded; the only problem is that to build a complete OS-style image, you tend to need nightly, either for no_std or to build your own std/core for the target platform.
bsder 9y ago
Do the Rust embedded developers all hang on an IRC room or something?
- steveklabnik 9y ago
  There's #rust-osdev (which has been pretty quiet lately) and #rust-embedded at least; I think Tock has their own channel too?

pc2g4d 9y ago

For me it's usually little things like `TryFrom`. Bits of API that aren't stabilized.

david-cako 9y ago

And the one after on what percentage of software developers feel a disturbing lack of politics in programming language development. I love rust, but the community's politics is very odd to me.

kbenson 9y ago
Politics as in national politics, or politics as in bureaucracy and people working the system for benefit (e.g. company politics)?
- david-cako 9y ago
  Social politics. Just odd socially-charged community management and documentation. I get a strong impression that the lead contributors (perhaps it's a mozilla cultural affect?) are very interested in pushing their equality agenda. Not that I don't subscribe to it in theory, it's just very tacky to me.
  - gcp 9y ago
    Got any examples where you think this shines through from the docs? Never noticed it. (I could easily imagine it in the community management so I'll take your word for that, but I've only really interacted with the IRC channels where this wasn't an issue)
    - Ruud-v-A 9y ago
      Not from the docs, but a pretty clear community example is that tickets for RustFest are more expensive for people who don’t belong to an underrepresented group. Edit: replaced “minority” with “underrepresented group”, as that is the language used on the website [1]. [1]: http://blog.rustfest.eu/this-week-in-rustfest-5-tickets-diversity http://blog.rustfest.eu/this-week-in-rustfest-5-tickets-dive...
      - kbenson 9y ago
        > Not from the docs, but a pretty clear community example is that tickets for RustFest are more expensive for people who don’t belong to a minority. Having just looked this up because I wasn't aware of it, I wouldn't classify that statement as true. They allow/ask for donations to help people from diverse locations attend. https://ti.to/asquera-event-ug/rustfest-zurich/ https://ti.to/asquera-event-ug/rustfest-zurich/ NOTE: THIS IS NOT A CONFERENCE TICKET. Support us bringing the opportunity to attend RustFest to more people around the globe who otherwise couldn't afford it. Anything you offer here will go into our diversity pool with the sole purpose of helping people from underrepresented groups attend RustFest. That doesn't mean minorities necessarily, and even if it did, it doesn't mean everyone in that group gets a cheaper ticket. From the first sentence though, it seems obvious they are trying to get diverse nationalities, not necessarily diverse ethnicity from the hosting country.

erickt 9y ago

Core/Community team that helped design the survey here. We actually did ask about this, but unfortunately it's quite time consuming to process through all the free text entry like this one. Some of the popular things people want from nightly are Clippy, impl traits, RLS, SIMD, and compiler plugins, which isn't surprising. It'll take some time to dig through the rest of the comments to see if there is anything unexpected. I'm hoping to do follow on posts as we go, but no promises :)

pc2g4d 9y ago
Finding most frequent words/phrases will tell you a lot. There's also topic modeling if you have enough text.

Perceptes 9y ago

The requirement of a nightly compiler for many of my projects has been my biggest problem with Rust for both surveys so far. I recently made an issue for my largest Rust project, Ruma, that enumerates all the things we're waiting on from the nightly compiler, as well as other library/ecosystem maturity issues. Just in case anyone is curious what some specific problems are for a real project: https://github.com/ruma/ruma/issues/189 https://github.com/ruma/ruma/issues/189

frankmcsherry 9y ago

That Rust binaries and Rust shared libraries use different allocators on stable, making FFI .. awkward.