TL;DR: In which the author doesn’t comprehend that Rust can do everything C can do on the same hardware, and overstates the stability of C as a language, pleading sentiment over sensibility.
Just to play devil’s advocate. Until rust gets a production ready GCC backend or LLVM gets more esoteric HW support there are probably some platforms that cannot run rust. That being said… realistically I think by the time rust becomes a large enough part of the kernel for it to matter the issue will have been sorted out as there are already 2 GCC implementations of rust in development…
The author claims to be an expert in Rust, so at least they don’t come from a standpoint of ‘I hate Rust and everyone who recommends it’ which seems to be somewhat popular
TLDR; it’s the way we’ve always done it and there’s a lot of inertia so we won’t put in a plan for the future because that’s a lot of work.
And that is a solid argument, to be honest. I would like to see some movement towards C++ but nobody will do that. And Rust will also be thrown out of the kernel in 10-20 releases.
Linux stuck with C. I want Plusix, and Rustomans should think about Rustix.
C++ is god awful
At least C has a simple design
- Rust has Redox
- Hare has Bunnix
Redox is really interesting because of the architecture. I don’t care for the Rust language itself, but Redox is the most interesting kernel project going.
The ecosystem is heavily Rust focused, but if the userspace matures enough that I can start writing projects in other languages, I’ll hop over.
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What is this modern programing method C. We need to get back to the purist programming language…
Assembly /s
Absolutely delusional.
code that is readable, auditable, and easy to port
Yeah C is the language that comes to everybody’s mind reading that. /s
C’s simplicity …
Is that simplicity currently in the room with us?
… and widespread adoption make it the best choice for this philosophy.
Ah, the asbestos argument.
If people want to run the latest kernels on hardware that isn’t maintained anymore, they need to toughen up and send patches …
… or they stick to an old kernel for their unmaintained hardware.
Both is fine to me, but that entitled Boomer attitude of “nobody should have nice things, because that would challenge status quo” needs to die.
I almost agree, but I think that supporting old hardware practically forever would be a nice thing to have.
Luckily, it doesn’t evolve anymore and given time Rust will likely have that support if it would be necessary for its role in the kernel.
The arguments are, at best, a reason not to have Rust as the primary language in the kernel. Implementing new hardware drivers or platforms is still viable even if you accept everything here.
