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Google recently rewrote the firmware for protected virtual machines in its Android Virtualization Framework using the Rust programming language and wants you to do the same, assuming you deal with firmware.
In a write-up on Thursday, Android engineers Ivan Lozano and Dominik Maier dig into the technical details of replacing legacy C and C++ code with Rust.
“You’ll see how easy it is to boost security with drop-in Rust replacements, and we’ll even demonstrate how the Rust toolchain can handle specialized bare-metal targets,” said Lozano and Maier.
Easy is not a term commonly heard with regard to a programming language known for its steep learning curve.
Nor is it easy to get C and C++ developers to see the world with Rust-tinted lenses. Just last week, one of the maintainers of the Rust for Linux project - created to work Rust code into the C-based Linux kernel - stepped down, citing resistance from Linux kernel developers.
“Here’s the thing, you’re not going to force all of us to learn Rust,” said a Linux kernel contributor during a lively discussion earlier this year at a conference.
I mean, I work as a software engineering and if I’m not doing continuing ed, be it about architecture, storage, or new languages, I’m going to be of less value in the marketplace. I’ve learnt languages I didn’t particularly want to in the past for work (though I generally came to tolerate or even like some of them. Not lua, though; lua can go to hell).
If Rust truly is the better, safer option, then these people are holding everything back.
“learn Rust” in this case is learn it to a level where all of the little behaviour around cross language integrations are understood and security flaws won’t be introduced. Expert level.
It’s not “I did a pet project over the weekend”.
You are correct and I am aware of that. However, it also seems that they both refuse to learn it and refuse to work with people at that expert level based on the recent drama, which seems very much like holding things back to me.
If you mean the drama I’m thinking off, that seemed to me to be a guy taking on a role that was always going to be 90% political because people are resistant, and sometimes downright hostile, to change and then flouncing off when it was 90% political.
He spent four years as the project maintainer. That’s hardly “flouncing off.”
Flouncing off is about the drama of leaving, not the time served before doing so. You can be in a role for decades and then flounce off!
Oh. Well, in that case, his resignation message was pretty matter-of-fact, not dramatic. He did link, in a note at the end of the email, to the now-infamous “the fact is, you’re not going to force everyone to learn Rust” video, and the drama was more or less self-manufacturing from there. But to be honest, I think it’s a good thing that more people are seeing that video than otherwise would have, and I can’t really blame him for linking to it.
And isn’t it somewhat concerning that bringing Rust to the kernel is still so controversial and highly “political”, several years after initial approval by Linus and Greg KH?
That’s a lot easily than learning the C to the same level and they “force” everyone to learn C.
Sure for newcomers to a project like the Linux kernel they have to learn C , because that is what the project is currently written in, but trying to transition the Linux kernel to rust forces people who already are contributing to go and learn rust to be able to continue what they were already doing. And sure you can argue that it’s being done so not everything has to go over at once, but there is a level of rust knowledge required at the interface between the two languages, and that burden is as far as I’ve seen being forced on those long term contributors.
It’s not the same thing.
This is not what is happening. The current long term contributors were asked to clarify semantics about C APIs, so the Rust maintainers could take it from there. At no point were the C maintainers asked to help maintain the Rust bindings.
Sure, but it’s very similar. The point is that those people didn’t get to choose the language they’re using and now someone is forcing them to use a specific language. They’ve always been forced to use a specific language.
I guess it just think “I don’t want to learn” is a lame excuse.
How about “To learn it to that level will take 10,000 hours I don’t have”? Does that make more sense to you?
No because it doesn’t remotely take that long.
C/C++ is the bedrock of our modern civilization in some ways more fundamental than actual bedrock, the first step in getting any OS running is making it run C and after that you are basically done, it’s not surprising that developers resist, if nothing else it’s a common language, and standards are hard to change on the best of days. This isn’t just learning a language, it’s a complete paradigm shift.
The bedrock of modern civilizations is expensive to develop, buggy and unergonomic though.
If you make C run, you probably (I’m not sure, would have to verify) can make rust run. And if there isn’t yet, there will probably soon be a C compiler written in rust, so you can choose to bootstrap from wherever you prefer.
C’s ABI will probably last longer than C, since there is not a stable rust ABI though.
You cannot, today, build a Rust compiler directly from C, but you’re right that people are working on it. See this recent post: https://notgull.net/announcing-dozer/
Edit: you can certainly bootstrap Rust from C via C++, as the article covers. I misinterpreted the comment above.
Currently it’s a long chain from an early version of GCC to the latest one, then mrustc (in C++) which can compile rustc 1.54.0.
To be fair, in that article mentions the way to get rust from C. Sure, there is not a compiler written in C, but C is down there in the list of compilers needed for rust, so “just” need to compile some other compilers in the middle.
Ah, sorry, I misinterpreted your comment somehow. Yes, Rust is bootstrappable today, it’s just a much longer process than it would be if there were a compiler written in C.
It’s not a question of what’s the better option. In reality we have a lot of software that already exists and works, and you can’t replace it all in bulk at the same time. So the question is whether the implementation of Rust makes logistical sense, given the difficulties of maintaining currently existing software while replacing some parts of it.