Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2024 14:36:09 -0600 From: Alan Somers <asomers@freebsd.org> To: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> Cc: FreeBSD Hackers <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: The Case for Rust (in any system) Message-ID: <CAOtMX2hY22v6w5coXSVEtoKWfJTYY-ML6zt-fUf=R6upc-bvgQ@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfoHP3G3YMvpqVwpQZSRQ64pnYhBJD60Dcar%2BBCUaJNL-w@mail.gmail.com> References: <CAOtMX2iCNX5OkdeghnbmcMrO0UYWwm4zfxFSZGznOznu%2Bmh5rA@mail.gmail.com> <CANCZdfoHP3G3YMvpqVwpQZSRQ64pnYhBJD60Dcar%2BBCUaJNL-w@mail.gmail.com>
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On Thu, Sep 5, 2024 at 2:16=E2=80=AFPM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote: > > > > On Thu, Sep 5, 2024 at 12:10=E2=80=AFPM Alan Somers <asomers@freebsd.org>= wrote: >> >> By now I expect that most of you have seen the long list of new >> security advisories that just came out. Strikingly, all were the >> result of memory handling errors. And none of them wouldn't have >> happened if their respective programs had been written in a >> memory-safe language. > > > FreeBSD represents hundreds of thousands or millions of man hours > in its current form (depending on how you measure it). It has evolved > over 30 years. To get to the same level of maturity in a rust rewrite wou= ld > take a similar amount of time. But even if it took an order of magnitude > less because rust is that much better, that represents a huge pool of > manpower that don't seem to be hanging out around the project just > waiting for something to do. Sure. I for one am not volunteering to rewrite CTL next week. > > Where do the resources for this come from? Without enough resources, > the rewrites will be crap and nobody will want to use them (or maybe even > FreeBSD). The rewrites to date have lost functionality (though maybe not > functionality that's important) relative to what they replace. Which rewrites are you thinking of? > > So great, we should switch to rust. But so far we have no way to do that > incrementally (other than a parallel build system, which isn't very FreeB= SDish). > And if we can't even find the resources to do that minimal level of work,= how > can the rest possibly be robustly undertaken? > > Warner Your point is obvious; FreeBSD is too big to rewrite the whole thing. But my point stands: new projects (whether inside of FreeBSD or not) should almost always be using a safe language. And any component that needs a major overhaul anyway should probably also be written in a safe language, too.
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