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It's only a matter of time before the Linux kernel itself is rewritten in Rust. Or, more likely, a Rust-based replacement is written.
by VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
It's only a matter of time before the Linux kernel itself is rewritten in Rust. Or, more likely, a Rust-based replacement is written.
- loeg 4y agoIn the same sense that the heat death of the universe is "only" a matter of time, perhaps.
- eddsh1994 4y agoImagine the number of developer years required for even just parity…
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- djbusby 4y ago20 years, 1000+ devs. Just a guess.
- fbdab103 4y agoI think it is a Ship of Theseus situation. Once Rust becomes acceptable in the core kernel, module by module, it is going to spread. I am fully Team Rust for core infrastructure, but I am curious how many security blunders in the kernel are memory errors vs bad security architecture.
- sliken 4y agoSort of. Is the Linux kernel huge and has an amazing number of man years in it .... certainly. If starting over from scratch could you ignore most architectures, drivers, etc and support current hardware ... also yes. A new OS could skip 32 bit mode, alpha, mips, itanium, loongarch, 68k, pa-risc, powerpc, s390, superH, sparc, parallel ports, serial ports, supporting zillions of PCI/PCIe cards that you can't buy any more, messing around with archaic 16 bit bootloaders, etc.
- andyjda 4y agowhy is it that any mention of Rust on the internet will bring about these wildly-overshooting claims. The amount of production software having been re-written in Rust (or replaced by a Rust counterpart) is minimal. This kind of rewrite is rare for any programming language. Yet claims like this are everywhere.
- bitcoinmoney 4y agoI thought it was a troll comment.
- andyjda 4y agoI find it annoying either way: it doesn't provide valuable/novel information and isn't conducive to productive conversation (in part because it's unclear if it's sarcastic or earnest)
- daguava 4y ago[dead]
- t-3 4y agoIf you're going to write a whole kernel in Rust, why would you settle for making a copy of Linux? Bug-for-bug compatibility with 30 years of cruft isn't exactly exciting or even necessary.