7 ms·

Ada is miles ahead of Rust when it comes to C interoperability. I posted this before in one of the other Rust threads, but you can't get more than two paragraph

by ajxs 7y ago

Ada is miles ahead of Rust when it comes to C interoperability. I posted this before in one of the other Rust threads, but you can't get more than two paragraphs through the official Rust FFI documentation ( https://doc.rust-lang.org/nomicon/ffi.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/nomicon/ffi.html ) before being asked to install a third-party dependency. The 'Interfaces.C' package is defined in the Ada language specification. And, as others have mentioned, Ada's language defined pragma directives, or Ada2012's aspects provide a way to implement FFI.

roca 7y ago
There's nothing wrong with pulling in the `libc` dependency. It literally means adding two lines of code and then `cargo` manages everything for you. It isn't really third-party; the owner is "rust-lang:libs". I understand that people are conditioned to think APIs are easier to consume when they're in the standard library, because that's true in many languages, especially those that lack a modern package management system (e.g. Ada). But it's not true in Rust and there are advantages to having libraries like `libc` outside the standard library. For example `libc` is updated more frequently than the Rust standard library (multiple times per month vs every six weeks).
- kragen 7y ago
  Having libc updated multiple times per month sounds like a fucking nightmare to me. What am I missing about this situation?
  - ajxs 7y ago
    I actually laughed at this comment. I was wondering the same thing. Although this is a cheap shot, how could I resist mentioning that Ada's FFI functionality is updated every 20 years on average and is still ahead of the curve.
- OneWingedShark 7y ago
  > There's nothing wrong with pulling in the `libc` dependency. Yes, there is. Not only is dependency transitive: you now depend on everything libc depends on — but now you're depending on the correctness AND properties of the dependency, to include security.

by ajxs 7y ago

roca 7y ago

There's nothing wrong with pulling in the `libc` dependency. It literally means adding two lines of code and then `cargo` manages everything for you. It isn't really third-party; the owner is "rust-lang:libs". I understand that people are conditioned to think APIs are easier to consume when they're in the standard library, because that's true in many languages, especially those that lack a modern package management system (e.g. Ada). But it's not true in Rust and there are advantages to having libraries like `libc` outside the standard library. For example `libc` is updated more frequently than the Rust standard library (multiple times per month vs every six weeks).

kragen 7y ago
Having libc updated multiple times per month sounds like a fucking nightmare to me. What am I missing about this situation?
- ajxs 7y ago
  I actually laughed at this comment. I was wondering the same thing. Although this is a cheap shot, how could I resist mentioning that Ada's FFI functionality is updated every 20 years on average and is still ahead of the curve.
OneWingedShark 7y ago
> There's nothing wrong with pulling in the `libc` dependency. Yes, there is. Not only is dependency transitive: you now depend on everything libc depends on — but now you're depending on the correctness AND properties of the dependency, to include security.