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I'm not sure it's wise to talk about Rust in those discussions, Rust is the language that needs nightly for a lot of recent libraries to work... talking about s

by Thaxll 8y ago

I'm not sure it's wise to talk about Rust in those discussions, Rust is the language that needs nightly for a lot of recent libraries to work... talking about stability / backward compatibility.

steveklabnik 8y ago
Which libraries are you talking about? Empirically, the majority of Rust users use stable. Additionally, the nightly/stable split exists to serve exactly this problem; if you need stability, you use stable, and the need for nightly drops each and every release.
- Thaxll 8y ago
  I think the most popular web framework is rocket.rs, it needs nightly. That's latest example I have, honestly when I looked a year ago others libraries were using nightly.
  - dx87 8y ago
    Why would you tell people that the recent libraries require nightly, when you admit that you haven't even looked at the library ecosystem in the past year? I honestly don't get the motivation that would make you want to come here just to post lies about a programming language.
    - wokwokwok 8y ago
      Hey hey, calm down a little. I use rust a lot, and it’s been heavily geared towards nightly for a long time. The whole rust nightly/beta/stable hasnt worked well, because (afaik) the beta usage is tiny and people tend to jump on nightly or stable. It’s only very recently any effort has been made to change this for the new edition. ...so, you know, the comment may not be entirely accurate, sure, but it’s our fault people have come away from rust feeling that way. The OP is not at fault here, and definitely not, I think, willfully lying. Take a deep breath; there’s no need for this sort of attitude, and frankly it reflects badly on the rest of us (rust users).
      - oconnor663 8y ago
        > The whole rust nightly/beta/stable hasnt worked well, because (afaik) the beta usage is tiny and people tend to jump on nightly or stable. It’s only very recently any effort has been made to change this for the new edition. My impression was that most people feel the Beta toolchain is doing its job just fine, because most projects that use CI include a Beta test run. I don't think the plan was ever to have people using Beta on the command line as their daily driver.
        wokwokwok 8y ago
        The recent regression soundness issues last release were indicative of people not using the beta. Notice specially the last month or so of actively asking people to try the beta. If it wasn’t a problem, that wouldn’t be happening.
        kibwen 8y ago
        Can you give an example of soundness regressions in the previous release? Neither the 1.29.1 release nor 1.29.2 are indicative of people not using the beta; the former concerned a potential security vulnerability in a stdlib API that had existed for several releases, and the latter concerned a runtime heisenbug that could neither be found by merely compiling with beta nor even reliably by running the code. > Notice specially the last month or so of actively asking people to try the beta. This is because for the last month the beta has represented the first release candidate for Rust 2018, which is more important than normal releases in all three of implementation scope, backwards compatibility concerns, and marketing potential.
      - pcwalton 8y ago
        Rust wouldn't be a better language if nightly were instantly made stable. Instead, we'd have a ton of half-baked features that we'd be supporting for eternity. Rocket requiring nightly is unfortunate, and I wish it didn't, but aside from Rocket stable has been a good forcing function to get crate authors to not add nightly dependencies. Anyway, from what I see, actix seems to get more buzz than Rocket these days, precisely because the former works on stable.
    - dang 8y ago
      Crossing into flamewar will get you banned here. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - steveklabnik 8y ago
    Rocket does, but there are other quite popular frameworks that do not. A year is a long time!
pcwalton 8y ago
> I'm not sure it's wise to talk about Rust in those discussions, Rust is the language that needs nightly for a lot of recent libraries to work No, it doesn't.
chc 8y ago
I don't think the fact that Rust is introducing features at a brisk pace, and the fact that people start writing libraries around them before they're released, have anything to do with whether Rust's backward and forward compatibility policies are good or bad. It seems unlikely, if Rust's policies do a good job of maintaining guarantees in a chaotic environment like that, that they would fail in a more placid environment.
TheDong 8y ago
I'm drawing a parallel between editions and Go's planned "go2" compatibility. Whether Rust has some differences in its versioning, the situations are similar enough that I assert Rust's choices are relevant. The fact that Rust itself may or may not have stability or backwards compatibility (I mean, I think it objectively does) isn't actually as important as the fact that the rust team wants to have those things and has thought hard about basically the same problem Go is tackling now, and has already taken the effort to write down its thoughts and conclusions. If you want to claim I shouldn't bring up Rust's "editions" work, I'd rather you talk about the "editions" RFC rather than Rust's slightly different versioning scheme.

by Thaxll 8y ago

I'm not sure it's wise to talk about Rust in those discussions, Rust is the language that needs nightly for a lot of recent libraries to work... talking about stability / backward compatibility.

steveklabnik 8y ago

Which libraries are you talking about? Empirically, the majority of Rust users use stable. Additionally, the nightly/stable split exists to serve exactly this problem; if you need stability, you use stable, and the need for nightly drops each and every release.

Thaxll 8y ago
I think the most popular web framework is rocket.rs, it needs nightly. That's latest example I have, honestly when I looked a year ago others libraries were using nightly.
- dx87 8y ago
  Why would you tell people that the recent libraries require nightly, when you admit that you haven't even looked at the library ecosystem in the past year? I honestly don't get the motivation that would make you want to come here just to post lies about a programming language.
  - wokwokwok 8y ago
    Hey hey, calm down a little. I use rust a lot, and it’s been heavily geared towards nightly for a long time. The whole rust nightly/beta/stable hasnt worked well, because (afaik) the beta usage is tiny and people tend to jump on nightly or stable. It’s only very recently any effort has been made to change this for the new edition. ...so, you know, the comment may not be entirely accurate, sure, but it’s our fault people have come away from rust feeling that way. The OP is not at fault here, and definitely not, I think, willfully lying. Take a deep breath; there’s no need for this sort of attitude, and frankly it reflects badly on the rest of us (rust users).
    - oconnor663 8y ago
      > The whole rust nightly/beta/stable hasnt worked well, because (afaik) the beta usage is tiny and people tend to jump on nightly or stable. It’s only very recently any effort has been made to change this for the new edition. My impression was that most people feel the Beta toolchain is doing its job just fine, because most projects that use CI include a Beta test run. I don't think the plan was ever to have people using Beta on the command line as their daily driver.
      - wokwokwok 8y ago
        The recent regression soundness issues last release were indicative of people not using the beta. Notice specially the last month or so of actively asking people to try the beta. If it wasn’t a problem, that wouldn’t be happening.
        kibwen 8y ago
        Can you give an example of soundness regressions in the previous release? Neither the 1.29.1 release nor 1.29.2 are indicative of people not using the beta; the former concerned a potential security vulnerability in a stdlib API that had existed for several releases, and the latter concerned a runtime heisenbug that could neither be found by merely compiling with beta nor even reliably by running the code. > Notice specially the last month or so of actively asking people to try the beta. This is because for the last month the beta has represented the first release candidate for Rust 2018, which is more important than normal releases in all three of implementation scope, backwards compatibility concerns, and marketing potential.
    - pcwalton 8y ago
      Rust wouldn't be a better language if nightly were instantly made stable. Instead, we'd have a ton of half-baked features that we'd be supporting for eternity. Rocket requiring nightly is unfortunate, and I wish it didn't, but aside from Rocket stable has been a good forcing function to get crate authors to not add nightly dependencies. Anyway, from what I see, actix seems to get more buzz than Rocket these days, precisely because the former works on stable.
  - dang 8y ago
    Crossing into flamewar will get you banned here. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- steveklabnik 8y ago
  Rocket does, but there are other quite popular frameworks that do not. A year is a long time!

pcwalton 8y ago

> I'm not sure it's wise to talk about Rust in those discussions, Rust is the language that needs nightly for a lot of recent libraries to work No, it doesn't.

chc 8y ago

I don't think the fact that Rust is introducing features at a brisk pace, and the fact that people start writing libraries around them before they're released, have anything to do with whether Rust's backward and forward compatibility policies are good or bad. It seems unlikely, if Rust's policies do a good job of maintaining guarantees in a chaotic environment like that, that they would fail in a more placid environment.

TheDong 8y ago

I'm drawing a parallel between editions and Go's planned "go2" compatibility. Whether Rust has some differences in its versioning, the situations are similar enough that I assert Rust's choices are relevant. The fact that Rust itself may or may not have stability or backwards compatibility (I mean, I think it objectively does) isn't actually as important as the fact that the rust team wants to have those things and has thought hard about basically the same problem Go is tackling now, and has already taken the effort to write down its thoughts and conclusions. If you want to claim I shouldn't bring up Rust's "editions" work, I'd rather you talk about the "editions" RFC rather than Rust's slightly different versioning scheme.