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> please test it on something beyond Linux and Mac That’s asking a lot. If your platform is poorly supported by Rust, then maybe that’s where your efforts shou

> please test it on something beyond Linux and Mac That’s asking a lot. If your platform is poorly supported by Rust, then maybe that’s where your efforts should be directed. If you fix that, lots of interesting stuff beyond one library is unlocked.

senko 4y ago
Theo de Raadt engaging the Rust community would be a sight to behold :)
- steveklabnik 4y ago
  I am not aware of him saying anything about Rust beyond this: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=151233345723889&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=151233345723889&w=2 Which doesn't mean he hasn't, of course!
  - robocat 4y ago
    That email (from Dec 2017) ends with “Such ecosystems come with incredible costs. For instance, rust cannot even compile itself on i386 at present time because it exhausts the address space.”. I presume Theo is actually complaining about using more than 3 GB (?) of memory, but still it really shows the different cost-versus-benefit decisions that we all make.
    - steveklabnik 4y ago
      Yes. My recollection is that around that time, llvm and/or rustc itself would sometimes go over that. I don't know off the top of my head what memory usage looks like right now.
    - jeffparsons 4y ago
      Is it actually reasonable to expect compiler toolchains to work on old or underpowered hardware? Or is the real problem that cross-compilation is still a special case, rather than being the only way compilers work? If it wasn't still normal to depend on your target environment being the same as your build host, would anyone really want to do serious development work directly on their RPi/Gameboy/watch/whatever, just because that is the target runtime environment?
      - senko 4y ago
        I think latchin onto this example misses the crux of his raitonale: > In OpenBSD there is a strict requirement that base builds base. So we cannot replace any base utility, unless the toolchain to build it is in the base. > Such ecosystems come with incredible costs. Basically, the cost of adding rust to the OpenBSD base system currently far outweights the proposed benefits (reimplement fileutils), especially considering people will probably not want to pour in the effort needed to rewrite those with strict POSIX compliance (which is another requirement). He's not saying rust isn't useful but that it wouldn't be a net benefit to have a hard dependency on it in the base system. In the BSD world folks take a very strict and conservative view of what can go in base (and for good reason IMHO). This is different from the GP comments about just making it possible to use rust programs/libraries in OpenBSD, so we're definitely on a tangent here.
      - robocat 4y ago
        I am wildly guessing that Theo’s beef is more that rust uses a lot of memory (paraphrase: 640kb should be enough for anybody). OpenBSD does integration builds on a variety of different systems, and maybe Theo noticed the OpenBSD/386 build failing due to lack of necessary memory?
        jeffparsons 4y ago
        That seems a reasonable guess, but it brings me straight back to wondering why such a diversity of build environments is necessary or useful. And my wild guess is that it's mostly because cross compilation is still a second class citizen in most languages today. Though I guess it could be a kind of cultural expectation that you should be able to compile the whole OS on the hardware you're running it on.
        steveklabnik 4y ago
        My understanding is that the policy of the project is that the base system must not be cross compiled. My understanding of why is that they want to be able to fully bootstrap from base itself.
      - 4y ago

senko 4y ago

Theo de Raadt engaging the Rust community would be a sight to behold :)

steveklabnik 4y ago
I am not aware of him saying anything about Rust beyond this: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=151233345723889&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=151233345723889&w=2 Which doesn't mean he hasn't, of course!
- robocat 4y ago
  That email (from Dec 2017) ends with “Such ecosystems come with incredible costs. For instance, rust cannot even compile itself on i386 at present time because it exhausts the address space.”. I presume Theo is actually complaining about using more than 3 GB (?) of memory, but still it really shows the different cost-versus-benefit decisions that we all make.
  - steveklabnik 4y ago
    Yes. My recollection is that around that time, llvm and/or rustc itself would sometimes go over that. I don't know off the top of my head what memory usage looks like right now.
  - jeffparsons 4y ago
    Is it actually reasonable to expect compiler toolchains to work on old or underpowered hardware? Or is the real problem that cross-compilation is still a special case, rather than being the only way compilers work? If it wasn't still normal to depend on your target environment being the same as your build host, would anyone really want to do serious development work directly on their RPi/Gameboy/watch/whatever, just because that is the target runtime environment?
    - senko 4y ago
      I think latchin onto this example misses the crux of his raitonale: > In OpenBSD there is a strict requirement that base builds base. So we cannot replace any base utility, unless the toolchain to build it is in the base. > Such ecosystems come with incredible costs. Basically, the cost of adding rust to the OpenBSD base system currently far outweights the proposed benefits (reimplement fileutils), especially considering people will probably not want to pour in the effort needed to rewrite those with strict POSIX compliance (which is another requirement). He's not saying rust isn't useful but that it wouldn't be a net benefit to have a hard dependency on it in the base system. In the BSD world folks take a very strict and conservative view of what can go in base (and for good reason IMHO). This is different from the GP comments about just making it possible to use rust programs/libraries in OpenBSD, so we're definitely on a tangent here.
    - robocat 4y ago
      I am wildly guessing that Theo’s beef is more that rust uses a lot of memory (paraphrase: 640kb should be enough for anybody). OpenBSD does integration builds on a variety of different systems, and maybe Theo noticed the OpenBSD/386 build failing due to lack of necessary memory?
      - jeffparsons 4y ago
        That seems a reasonable guess, but it brings me straight back to wondering why such a diversity of build environments is necessary or useful. And my wild guess is that it's mostly because cross compilation is still a second class citizen in most languages today. Though I guess it could be a kind of cultural expectation that you should be able to compile the whole OS on the hardware you're running it on.
        steveklabnik 4y ago
        My understanding is that the policy of the project is that the base system must not be cross compiled. My understanding of why is that they want to be able to fully bootstrap from base itself.
    - 4y ago