Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2025 14:59:52 -0600 From: Alan Somers <asomers@freebsd.org> To: FreeBSD CURRENT <freebsd-current@freebsd.org> Subject: The status of readdir_r in Rust Message-ID: <CAOtMX2gj%2BFV4Ok_GCjE==q3DBVdGL=_GTs00aB-NSgbtSffd-Q@mail.gmail.com>
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[-- Attachment #1 --] On 13-September we had a long conversation about readdir_r, about whether modern applications should be using it (they shouldn't), and about whether we should remove it entirely for FreeBSD 16 (no, at least not yet). The big problem was that lang/rust still used readdir_r in its standard library, so we definitely need to preserve that function for now. Since then I've submitted a PR to remove the readdir_r calls from the standard library [^1]. I also updated libc to specifically bind to the pre-FreeBSD 15 ELF symbol for readdir_r [^2], which ensures that applications will continue to build even after we remove that function. Finally, Github code search found several crates that are still using readdir_r, but only one of them is a crate that I personally care about: Nix. So I did the same thing there that I did to the standard library [^3]. At this point, I think it should be safe to remove readdir_r from FreeBSD 16 in about six months, at least as far as Rust is concerned. [^1]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/146549 [^2]: https://github.com/rust-lang/libc/pull/4694 [^3]: https://github.com/nix-rust/nix/pull/2674 [-- Attachment #2 --] <div dir="ltr"><div>On 13-September we had a long conversation about readdir_r, about whether modern applications should be using it (they shouldn't), and about whether we should remove it entirely for FreeBSD 16 (no, at least not yet). The big problem was that lang/rust still used readdir_r in its standard library, so we definitely need to preserve that function for now.</div><div><br></div><div>Since then I've submitted a PR to remove the readdir_r calls from the standard library [^1]. I also updated libc to specifically bind to the pre-FreeBSD 15 ELF symbol for readdir_r [^2], which ensures that applications will continue to build even after we remove that function. Finally, Github code search found several crates that are still using readdir_r, but only one of them is a crate that I personally care about: Nix. So I did the same thing there that I did to the standard library [^3].</div><div><br></div><div>At this point, I think it should be safe to remove readdir_r from FreeBSD 16 in about six months, at least as far as Rust is concerned.</div><div><br></div><div>[^1]: <a href="https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/146549">https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/146549</a></div><div>[^2]: <a href="https://github.com/rust-lang/libc/pull/4694">https://github.com/rust-lang/libc/pull/4694</a></div><div>[^3]: <a href="https://github.com/nix-rust/nix/pull/2674">https://github.com/nix-rust/nix/pull/2674</a></div></div>;home | help
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