> To my knowledge most if not all of these people driving Rust adoption in Linux are seasoned Linux contributors and/or maintainers. They are not outsiders "coming to other people's projects".
Not in this case. It's the Rust evangelist who is the newcomer. FTA:
> Almeida said that he is not trying to keep the C API static; his goal is to get the filesystem developers to explain the semantics of the API so that they can be encoded into Rust.
The responses from the kernel team members to the proposal seem reasoned and mature to me:
> In addition, when the C code changes, the Rust code needs to follow along, but who is going to do that work?
> As the C code evolves, which will happen more quickly than with the Rust code, at least initially, there will be a need to keep the two APIs in sync.
> The object lifecycles are being encoded into the Rust API, but there is no equivalent of that in C; if someone changes the lifecycle of the object on one side, the other will have bugs.
> Encoding a single lifecycle understanding into the API means that its functions will not work for some filesystems.
> Part of the problem, Ted Ts'o said, is that there is an effort to get "everyone to switch over to the religion" of Rust; that will not happen, he said, because there are 50+ different filesystems in Linux that will not be instantaneously converted.
> Bottomley said that as more of those semantics get encoded into the bindings, they will become more fragile from a synchronization standpoint
> But Ts'o pointedly said that not everyone will learn Rust; if he makes a change, he will fix all of the affected C code, but, "because I don't know Rust, I am not going to fix the Rust bindings, sorry".
> Not in this case. It's the Rust evangelist who is the newcomer. FTA:
From a quick search, I've found that the person is somewhat active in kernel commits over the last four years (mostly but not all rust related from what I see) and is involved in some lkml stuff and some commits over a decade ago. Not sure if this makes him a newcomer or not, just wanted to provide a bit more context.
This is case-in-point; bcachefs maintainer is merely _entertaining_ the ideas proposed by the Rust evangelist, with the express intent of exploring alternatives... and suddenly it's enough for "the movement" to co-opt him into the "proposal" [to include Rust in the FS subsystem], it seeems. Are Rust supporters really as desperate so-as to co-opt ANY interest in the subject?? This toxicity is not helping anybody.
Kent Overstreet is the bcachefs maintainer and he's extremely pro-Rust. He has in fact talked about wanting to move bcachefs to Rust, and the userspace tools for bcachefs are already written in Rust.
He's been participating in the mailing list discussions about using Rust / providing Rust APIs for the FS subsystem.
I don't know who you're confusing him with, but you're confusing him with someone else.
I'm not sure what you are saying. Maybe the first proposal isn't the best one, so some exploration is warranted.
Is Kent an unwilling pawn in the game of getting Rust implemented in the Linux kernel? Or is he not serious enough about getting it in that his support should not be considered?
From what I've seen it reads to me Kent would be very happy to implement bcachefs in Rust in the Linux kernel. Bcachefs-tools does make use of it.
Kent has been really vocal about writing bcachefs in Rust in the IRC channel. They even started some work already, but decided to wait until the common abstractions are ready and merged.
> But they don't want to be writing file systems; instead, the only goal that matters to them is getting to the heart of the most popular OS, so as to secure some longterm success.
Wrong final word: security. In the war against remote exploits, harden the most widely used target first.
Rust only exists because getting people to reliably and consistently write secure C++ proved impossible.
(yes I know C++ is a much larger and more complicated language than C)
The only people to "hate" on Linux are the Rust community; in fact, they genuinely DESPISE the Linux maintainers for allowing themselves to be so brazenly exploited over the years. This is akin to how communists despise the workers.
Now, as for me: I respect Rust, not hate it, and only sympathise / pity the wider Rust movement. I believe their resources are much better spent someplace else: NOT bickering over decades-old operating systems and getting into the other people's codebases (this is what pleading for "common abstractions" is, really.) Had they learnt to stop competing for popularity and recognition, they would be very successful in validating the borrowing hypothesis. The conviction is not there: had there been conviction, heart, and commitment, they wouldn't bother with old codebases, and would instead make something special.
P.S. I don't require hate to be superior, my nature is sufficient to that end.
Not in this case. It's the Rust evangelist who is the newcomer. FTA:
> Almeida said that he is not trying to keep the C API static; his goal is to get the filesystem developers to explain the semantics of the API so that they can be encoded into Rust.
The responses from the kernel team members to the proposal seem reasoned and mature to me:
> In addition, when the C code changes, the Rust code needs to follow along, but who is going to do that work?
> As the C code evolves, which will happen more quickly than with the Rust code, at least initially, there will be a need to keep the two APIs in sync.
> The object lifecycles are being encoded into the Rust API, but there is no equivalent of that in C; if someone changes the lifecycle of the object on one side, the other will have bugs.
> Encoding a single lifecycle understanding into the API means that its functions will not work for some filesystems.
> Part of the problem, Ted Ts'o said, is that there is an effort to get "everyone to switch over to the religion" of Rust; that will not happen, he said, because there are 50+ different filesystems in Linux that will not be instantaneously converted.
> Bottomley said that as more of those semantics get encoded into the bindings, they will become more fragile from a synchronization standpoint
> But Ts'o pointedly said that not everyone will learn Rust; if he makes a change, he will fix all of the affected C code, but, "because I don't know Rust, I am not going to fix the Rust bindings, sorry".