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Would these replace the standard C versions of the coreutils? Would development efforts cease, or reduce, on the C versions (factoring in the little active dev

by desine 5y ago

Would these replace the standard C versions of the coreutils? Would development efforts cease, or reduce, on the C versions (factoring in the little active development they currently see). I ask because there was a recent discussion [0] on Python's crypto library integrating Rust code, and the fact that this limits the platforms that can be supported. Poettering also rejected Rust code from the systemd utilities for the same reason [1]. One of the main reasons I love the GNU/Linux ecosystem is that I have been able to run it on a variety of old and esoteric hardware. I don't wish to see this arbitrarily taken away, in the future. C is a great language at least in the fact that every architecture I have ever heard of has a (mostly) standards-compliant C compiler. A little finagling may be needed to get code to compile, but it's rarely a project stopping issue. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26097153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26097153 [1] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/18767 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/18767

Narishma 5y ago
> Poettering also rejected Rust code from the systemd utilities for the same reason Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but that doesn't seem to be the case, at least according to [0], which is more recent that the link you posted. They seem to be taking the same approach as the Linux kernel in terms of rust support. [0] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/19598 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/19598
- desine 5y ago
  ouch, I hadn't seen the updates, or followed along, thanks for the heads up. I fought many years by hopping distros to keep init.d as my initialization environment. Eventually I gave up and accepted systemd on Debian, my otherwise preferred distro. Maybe it's time I go back to some frankenstein'ed Gentoo build or some other obscure distro. This isn't any sort of "threat", we're not "customers" leaving money on the table or anything. But the permeation of LLVM into being a hard dependency to have an up to date FOSS system feels against part of the spirit of the movement. At least if I become part of some botnet or scanner getting distro popularity metrics my vote will be counted the way I like. I say this as someone who likes what LLVM has done, and appreciate having more compiler options. It feels somewhat wrong that we're putting so much weight on it though, its off putting we're now leveraging these languages that have only a single implementation. It's hard to describe because it's not inherently against anything FOSS or POSIX philosophy, but whereas one could make a mediocre C compiler in ASM in a few weeks effort, I don't think I can do the same with Rust, Go, or any other modern full featured language. Perhaps it's just me becoming increasingly the curmudengous old man that fits the stereotypes. I don't really mind Rust, or Go, but I don't really use them either. I learned on C++ but later found I really appreciated the simplicity of C. Maybe I'll just finally start putting in real effort to contribute in the areas I care about.

by desine 5y ago

Narishma 5y ago

> Poettering also rejected Rust code from the systemd utilities for the same reason Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but that doesn't seem to be the case, at least according to [0], which is more recent that the link you posted. They seem to be taking the same approach as the Linux kernel in terms of rust support. [0] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/19598 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/19598

desine 5y ago
ouch, I hadn't seen the updates, or followed along, thanks for the heads up. I fought many years by hopping distros to keep init.d as my initialization environment. Eventually I gave up and accepted systemd on Debian, my otherwise preferred distro. Maybe it's time I go back to some frankenstein'ed Gentoo build or some other obscure distro. This isn't any sort of "threat", we're not "customers" leaving money on the table or anything. But the permeation of LLVM into being a hard dependency to have an up to date FOSS system feels against part of the spirit of the movement. At least if I become part of some botnet or scanner getting distro popularity metrics my vote will be counted the way I like. I say this as someone who likes what LLVM has done, and appreciate having more compiler options. It feels somewhat wrong that we're putting so much weight on it though, its off putting we're now leveraging these languages that have only a single implementation. It's hard to describe because it's not inherently against anything FOSS or POSIX philosophy, but whereas one could make a mediocre C compiler in ASM in a few weeks effort, I don't think I can do the same with Rust, Go, or any other modern full featured language. Perhaps it's just me becoming increasingly the curmudengous old man that fits the stereotypes. I don't really mind Rust, or Go, but I don't really use them either. I learned on C++ but later found I really appreciated the simplicity of C. Maybe I'll just finally start putting in real effort to contribute in the areas I care about.