On: Linus Torvalds: Rust for the Kernel Could Possibly...

[busterarm]

You would care if you were on one of the dozen or so CPU architectures that would suddenly become unsupported.

[unrealhoang → busterarm]

Probably the Rust code will be drivers for devices that are not compatible with non-rust supported architectures anyway.

[Unklejoe → unrealhoang]

If the drivers are for PCI or USB devices, then they would have probably worked for those unsupported architectures "for free" if they were written in C.

[nicoburns → Unklejoe]

By the time these kind of drivers are being written in Rust, the gcc support will be there anyway.

[busterarm → unrealhoang]

Also true, but there's a precedent for Rust developers & shipping their changes without regard for what's being deprecated. [1]

[1]: like when PyPI cryptography first switched to Rust and broke ansible/openwrt/etc.

[ntoskrnl → busterarm]

The Linux kernel takes backwards compatibility much more seriously than your typical Python package.

[busterarm → ntoskrnl]

The Linux kernel community and Rust community still aren't on the same page on things yet, as you'll learn by reading lwn regularly.

We're just not there yet.

[nindalf → busterarm]

Seems like Linus and Greg and a bunch of people who oversee technical decisions on the Linux kernel are on board though?

[humanwhosits → nindalf]

And they can back-out/revert if they decide to as well

[merb → busterarm]

ansible... btw. ansible breaks basically tons of stuff every release, so no matter if the pypi crytography broke ansible. ansible is already broke. heck they renamed their package in the most stupid way ever...

[josefx → busterarm]

I thought we are talking about Rust? Full official Tier 1 support for aarch64 and x86, why would you even want more? That is two, and let me say it again TWO fully supported CPU architectures, that is twice as many as your average computer needs. Nobody needs dozens, certainly not someone who wants to be a Rockstar Rust dev. . /s

[btilly → josefx]

There are lots of cases where you want more. For example Google's secure boot for Pixel uses the Titan M security chip, which is a RISC-V architecture.

Still, looking at https://llvm.org/docs/CompilerWriterInfo.html, it is hard to find an architecture that Clang won't support that is relevant to many people. And if someone does find one, well, Clang is open source and open to adding more architectures.

[raxxorraxor → btilly]

Secure boot for smartphones is one of the reasons why smartphones are so restrictive and oriented against the user instead of for him. They should drop the support.

[kevin_thibedeau → josefx]

The majority of microprocessors deployed in the world are using neither of these platforms. Some of their developers like having a featureful compiler for them.