3 ms·

> They should retry rewriting it in rust (or zig) It's an antipattern to chase whatever language is being hyped the most at the moment. And it's probably bad f

> They should retry rewriting it in rust (or zig) It's an antipattern to chase whatever language is being hyped the most at the moment. And it's probably bad from a community POV to deliberately attract developers who are chasing hype.

freedomben 1y ago
Yeah, projects like this really need people who will be into it for the long term, and using something like rust or zig is a big gamble. It eliminates a huge swath of potential long-term contributors who know C well and don't want to change, in exchange for an unknown group with an unknown amount of overlap.
- cultofmetatron 1y ago
  > It eliminates a huge swath of potential long-term contributors who know C well and don't want to change, that pretty much described the current hurd dev community and its dying. I wouldn't advocate a full RIIR for most things but I think its a solid hail Mary to maybe make hurd relevant. The alternative is its going to be dead in a few years when the contributors all age out to spend time with their grandkids.
  - Y_Y 1y ago
    I'll believe it when Netcraft confirms it
  - piperswe 1y ago
    At this point... if you want to contribute to a UNIX-like microkernel-based OS written in Rust, Redox is right there
- pengaru 1y ago
  > It eliminates a huge swath of potential long-term contributors who know C well and don't want to change I don't think that swath is as huge as you think it is in 2025. We were saying the same stuff during the Golang heydays ~8-9 years ago, and the C experts were already pretty fucking MIA. The Linux and systemd projects are both suffering from a lack of new blood interested in writing plain old C, and the old guard is aging out. Linux is embracing Rust, which should help. I imagine systemd will do the same thing once a Rust toolchain is required to build the average distro kernel.
- kstrauser 1y ago
  OTOH, I have zero interest in contributing to a C kernel. Even the experts can't write it without messing up with C's vastly many footguns. I'm not a C expert. What chance to I have to add a new kernel feature that doesn't literally destroy my system? It's too intimidating in the sheer amount of risky "surface area" I have to perfectly manage or else face dire consequences. Nah. I'd much rather use a newer language that's explicitly designed for writing the same sorts of things that C is but with a teensy portion of the footguns. I'm not saying C is bad. I am saying that if the Linux kernel devs still write buggy code sometimes — not because of logic errors or other design-level mistakes, but because of some goofy memory issue or accidentally wandering off into the wilderness of UB — then I guarantee I'm going to screw it up. If it were in Rust or Zig or whatever, I'd feel like I had at least a fighting chance of making a tweak that didn't immediately format my hard drive and kick my cat.
  - mathiaspoint 1y ago
    Yeah and the rest of us don't want a kernel that mutates a heap-like structure for every minor operation. So until there's a language for writing software with a C-like approach to memory and lifetimes you're not going to see C or C software replaced.
    - kstrauser 1y ago
      So, Rust or Zig are OK, then.
      - mathiaspoint 1y ago
        So you've never written a rust program then. Or you don't know how to write C well.
        cultofmetatron 1y ago
        out of curiousity, wheat heap like structure are you talking about? there are data structures as part of the standard library that do that but as far as I know. you can avoid that and stick to data structures within the stack just fine in rust. I don't claim to be an expert so Id appreciate if you could explain further
kouteiheika 1y ago
> > They should retry rewriting it in rust (or zig) > It's an antipattern to chase whatever language is being hyped the most at the moment. Hype? Come on, Rust's 1.0 release was already over a decade ago. At this point it's pretty boring. How many more years will it take before people start taking it seriously and finally accept that those who prefer Rust over C do so because it's a much better language than C and not just because it's hyped?

freedomben 1y ago

Yeah, projects like this really need people who will be into it for the long term, and using something like rust or zig is a big gamble. It eliminates a huge swath of potential long-term contributors who know C well and don't want to change, in exchange for an unknown group with an unknown amount of overlap.

cultofmetatron 1y ago
> It eliminates a huge swath of potential long-term contributors who know C well and don't want to change, that pretty much described the current hurd dev community and its dying. I wouldn't advocate a full RIIR for most things but I think its a solid hail Mary to maybe make hurd relevant. The alternative is its going to be dead in a few years when the contributors all age out to spend time with their grandkids.
- Y_Y 1y ago
  I'll believe it when Netcraft confirms it
- piperswe 1y ago
  At this point... if you want to contribute to a UNIX-like microkernel-based OS written in Rust, Redox is right there
pengaru 1y ago
> It eliminates a huge swath of potential long-term contributors who know C well and don't want to change I don't think that swath is as huge as you think it is in 2025. We were saying the same stuff during the Golang heydays ~8-9 years ago, and the C experts were already pretty fucking MIA. The Linux and systemd projects are both suffering from a lack of new blood interested in writing plain old C, and the old guard is aging out. Linux is embracing Rust, which should help. I imagine systemd will do the same thing once a Rust toolchain is required to build the average distro kernel.
kstrauser 1y ago
OTOH, I have zero interest in contributing to a C kernel. Even the experts can't write it without messing up with C's vastly many footguns. I'm not a C expert. What chance to I have to add a new kernel feature that doesn't literally destroy my system? It's too intimidating in the sheer amount of risky "surface area" I have to perfectly manage or else face dire consequences. Nah. I'd much rather use a newer language that's explicitly designed for writing the same sorts of things that C is but with a teensy portion of the footguns. I'm not saying C is bad. I am saying that if the Linux kernel devs still write buggy code sometimes — not because of logic errors or other design-level mistakes, but because of some goofy memory issue or accidentally wandering off into the wilderness of UB — then I guarantee I'm going to screw it up. If it were in Rust or Zig or whatever, I'd feel like I had at least a fighting chance of making a tweak that didn't immediately format my hard drive and kick my cat.
- mathiaspoint 1y ago
  Yeah and the rest of us don't want a kernel that mutates a heap-like structure for every minor operation. So until there's a language for writing software with a C-like approach to memory and lifetimes you're not going to see C or C software replaced.
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    So, Rust or Zig are OK, then.
    - mathiaspoint 1y ago
      So you've never written a rust program then. Or you don't know how to write C well.
      - cultofmetatron 1y ago
        out of curiousity, wheat heap like structure are you talking about? there are data structures as part of the standard library that do that but as far as I know. you can avoid that and stick to data structures within the stack just fine in rust. I don't claim to be an expert so Id appreciate if you could explain further

kouteiheika 1y ago

> > They should retry rewriting it in rust (or zig) > It's an antipattern to chase whatever language is being hyped the most at the moment. Hype? Come on, Rust's 1.0 release was already over a decade ago. At this point it's pretty boring. How many more years will it take before people start taking it seriously and finally accept that those who prefer Rust over C do so because it's a much better language than C and not just because it's hyped?