3 ms·

Even without Fil-C I do not think it is even clear that new software should be written in Rust. It seems to have a lot of fans, but IMHO it is overrated. If yo

by uecker 6mo ago

Even without Fil-C I do not think it is even clear that new software should be written in Rust. It seems to have a lot of fans, but IMHO it is overrated. If you need perfect memory safety Rust has an advantage at the moment, but if you are not careful you trade this for much higher supply chain risks. And I believe the advantage in memory safety will disappear in the next years due to improved tooling in C, simply by adding the formal verification that proves the safety which will work automatically.

kobebrookskC3 6mo ago
> simply by adding the formal verification that proves the safety which will work automatically "simply" and "formal verification" are usually oxymorons, never mind "automatically"
- uecker 6mo ago
  Fair enough, but I have seen how it works and for just temporal memory safety, it could be simple.
zozbot234 6mo ago
Memory safety is absolute table stakes when it comes to formal verification. You can't endow your code with meaningful semantics if you don't have some way of ensuring memory safety.
- uecker 6mo ago
  Indeed, and this is why people who care about this are also proving memory safety in C. The issue is that we do not have good open-source tooling that specifically focuses on formal verification of memory safety in C.
- foldr 6mo ago
  That's far from trivial in Rust because of 'unsafe' blocks. There are approaches to verifying unsafe code in Rust, but formally verifying a Rust program is still likely to be significantly more complex than formally verifying, say, a Java program. (And before someone says it: no you don't only have to verify the small amount of code in 'unsafe' blocks. Memory safety errors can be caused by the interaction of safe and unsafe code.)
  - pjmlp 6mo ago
    At least you can grep for unsafe/system/unchecked in several alternative systems languages. For C and C++, we have to hope the static analysis tool actually found all possible spots. Despite the way it is going on as a drama between WG21 and community, C++ might eventually get Ada style profiles in C++29, lets see how it plays out. Then you also would have something to grep for, [[profile:...]] C? Same business as usual.
    - foldr 6mo ago
      Grepping for unsafe blocks doesn’t help that much for formal verification, because you have to verify all of the code. The easiest way to see this is to note that ‘unsafe’ itself doesn’t have any semantics, so it can’t possibly allow anything to be proved that couldn’t have been proved otherwise.
      - pjmlp 6mo ago
        It helps finding locations for possible flaws outside the type system soundness. Now if we go discussing formal verification in general, even something like Dafny or Lean may fail, if the proofs aren't correctly written for the deployment scenario. Just like one may still die while wearing helmets, airbags, and security belts, yet the casualties amount is much worse without them.
        foldr 6mo ago
        It helps a human armed with only a tool as crude as grep. But if Rust didn't have the requirement to mark unsafe operations with the 'unsafe' keyword, that information could trivially be added back automatically. If you're doing correctness proofs of realistic Rust code, you'd better already have tools that are at least capable of looking through your codebase for any instances of raw pointer access, etc. There's a lot of mythology around Rust unsafe blocks. They're a useful lint, but they don't alter the fundamental safety properties of the language.
        6mo ago
pjmlp 6mo ago
The same risks as everyone that uses system installers for their C and C++ binary libraries, without spending one second looking into source code. The commercial world of C and C++ is pretty much focused on binary libaries, and in many occasions access to source code is extra.
- uecker 6mo ago
  These are not the "same risks" at all.

by uecker 6mo ago

kobebrookskC3 6mo ago

> simply by adding the formal verification that proves the safety which will work automatically "simply" and "formal verification" are usually oxymorons, never mind "automatically"

uecker 6mo ago
Fair enough, but I have seen how it works and for just temporal memory safety, it could be simple.

zozbot234 6mo ago

Memory safety is absolute table stakes when it comes to formal verification. You can't endow your code with meaningful semantics if you don't have some way of ensuring memory safety.

uecker 6mo ago
Indeed, and this is why people who care about this are also proving memory safety in C. The issue is that we do not have good open-source tooling that specifically focuses on formal verification of memory safety in C.
foldr 6mo ago
That's far from trivial in Rust because of 'unsafe' blocks. There are approaches to verifying unsafe code in Rust, but formally verifying a Rust program is still likely to be significantly more complex than formally verifying, say, a Java program. (And before someone says it: no you don't only have to verify the small amount of code in 'unsafe' blocks. Memory safety errors can be caused by the interaction of safe and unsafe code.)
- pjmlp 6mo ago
  At least you can grep for unsafe/system/unchecked in several alternative systems languages. For C and C++, we have to hope the static analysis tool actually found all possible spots. Despite the way it is going on as a drama between WG21 and community, C++ might eventually get Ada style profiles in C++29, lets see how it plays out. Then you also would have something to grep for, [[profile:...]] C? Same business as usual.
  - foldr 6mo ago
    Grepping for unsafe blocks doesn’t help that much for formal verification, because you have to verify all of the code. The easiest way to see this is to note that ‘unsafe’ itself doesn’t have any semantics, so it can’t possibly allow anything to be proved that couldn’t have been proved otherwise.
    - pjmlp 6mo ago
      It helps finding locations for possible flaws outside the type system soundness. Now if we go discussing formal verification in general, even something like Dafny or Lean may fail, if the proofs aren't correctly written for the deployment scenario. Just like one may still die while wearing helmets, airbags, and security belts, yet the casualties amount is much worse without them.
      - foldr 6mo ago
        It helps a human armed with only a tool as crude as grep. But if Rust didn't have the requirement to mark unsafe operations with the 'unsafe' keyword, that information could trivially be added back automatically. If you're doing correctness proofs of realistic Rust code, you'd better already have tools that are at least capable of looking through your codebase for any instances of raw pointer access, etc. There's a lot of mythology around Rust unsafe blocks. They're a useful lint, but they don't alter the fundamental safety properties of the language.
        6mo ago

pjmlp 6mo ago

The same risks as everyone that uses system installers for their C and C++ binary libraries, without spending one second looking into source code. The commercial world of C and C++ is pretty much focused on binary libaries, and in many occasions access to source code is extra.

uecker 6mo ago
These are not the "same risks" at all.