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It is totally okay to not use Rust in the base system, as phk reasonably objected. But many arguments against Rust would not necessarily translate to other lang
by lifthrasiir 2y ago
It is totally okay to not use Rust in the base system, as phk reasonably objected. But many arguments against Rust would not necessarily translate to other languages that may reasonably replace C and don't (yet) come with a large ecosystem. (Zig would be a good example here.) In fact, a more productive path forward will be finding such language and funding its evolution so that it remains usable without a large ecosystem to be eventually built!
- phicoh 2y agoI think long term, FreeBSD may lose out if Rust in the base system is not supported. Note the 'may'. It is hard to predict the future in this regard. Where I work, we have some open source C code that is also in the FreeBSD base system. We have decided to create new code in Rust and look into deprecating the C code. Obviously, the FreeBSD project can just take over maintenance of the C code, but that will be burden to the project. Note the 'may' and 'long term'. But for a project like FreeBSD it is good to look at Rust before it becomes an issue. A more silent problem, it is quite possible that Rust programmers are less likely to contribute to a project that is based on C and C++ where Rust is not welcome. Certainly when new code is needed, that group will wonder why it needs to be written in C or C++.