Linus responds to Hellwig - "the pull request you objected to DID NOT TOUCH THE DMA LAYER AT ALL... if you as a maintainer feel that you control who or what can use your code, YOU ARE WRONG."
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Any other interpretations are wrong
Yes that's what I said.
Right. Okay well this has been fun, have a good one.
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It literally wasn't about Rust specifically though. Christoph literally said it was about anything that was not C, including assembly, C++, brainfuck, or whatever, entering the kernel. Christoph likes Rust. Christoph (rightfully) does not like mixed language codebases for projects as large and important as Linux
(rightfully) does not like mixed language codebases for projects as large and important as Linux
You make it sound like it's a matter of taste rather than a technical one (and I suspect it actually might be just about taste in the end)
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I can understand Hellwig's fear, though.
From what I gather as a bystander, it's apparently common that a refactoring in your module that breaks its API will involve fixing all the call-sites to keep the effort on the person responsible for the change. Now the Rust maintainers say "it's fine; if it breaks, we'll deal with it" which is theoretically takes away the cross-language issue for the C-maintainer. Practically I can very well see, that this will still cause friction in the future.
Let's say such a change happens and at that time there's a bit of time pressure and the capacity on the rust maintainers is thing for whatever reasons. Will they still happily swallow that change or will they start to discuss if it's really necessary to do that change? And suddenly, the C-maintainer has a political discussion on top of the technical issue they wanted to solve.
As someone who just wants to get shit done, I would definitely have that fear.
(That doesn't mean it's still a bullet not worth swallowing. The change overall can still be worth the friction. I am just saying that I think it's not totally unwarranted that a maintainer feels affected by this even though current pledges from the other parties promise otherwise; this stance can change or at least be challenged over and over.)
Let's say such a change happens and at that time there's a bit of time pressure and the capacity on the rust maintainers is thing for whatever reasons. Will they still happily swallow that change or will they start to discuss if it's really necessary to do that change? And suddenly, the C-maintainer has a political discussion on top of the technical issue they wanted to solve.
This situation could occur even if the code using the API was written in C.
If an API change breaks other downstream kernel code, and that code can't be fixed in time then they have a conversation about pushing the changes to the next build.
In the end, Linus has already chosen to accept the extra development overhead in using Rust. I think this situation was more about a maintainer, who happens to disagree with the Rust inclusion, using their position to create unnecessary friction for other maintainers.
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Actual Linux news rather than "which distro should I use for gaming and bit torrents?"
New people don't realize that Linux is really a soap opera with a small software project attached.
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before it's even become apparent what the reaction to Cristoph Hellwig's behavior would be
It was very clear that the reaction was going to be no reaction. That's the point.
Cristoph Hellwig's initial message was on 2025-01-08. Marcan's stepping down was on 2025-02-07. So no, it's not several months; it's barely one month. Getting in fights in mailing lists and making social media posts is not everyone's first reaction and it is arguably not the best reaction, especially for people in places of power. It is silly for Marcan to demand everybody's reaction to be as loud and as quick as his own.
It was very clear that the reaction was going to be no reaction.
Well, it turns out that the reaction was pretty clear not "no reaction". That's the reason this thread we're talking in exists. Marcan was objectively wrong if he assumed Hellwig's comments and nack would be accepted. Instead, Hellwig was explicitly called out for having no say on the matter and for producing "garbage arguments".
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God damn if these Rust glazers are so offended by this, just go work on Redox
What does glazer mean in this context? (English is my fourth language)
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Cristoph Hellwig's initial message was on 2025-01-08. Marcan's stepping down was on 2025-02-07. So no, it's not several months; it's barely one month. Getting in fights in mailing lists and making social media posts is not everyone's first reaction and it is arguably not the best reaction, especially for people in places of power. It is silly for Marcan to demand everybody's reaction to be as loud and as quick as his own.
It was very clear that the reaction was going to be no reaction.
Well, it turns out that the reaction was pretty clear not "no reaction". That's the reason this thread we're talking in exists. Marcan was objectively wrong if he assumed Hellwig's comments and nack would be accepted. Instead, Hellwig was explicitly called out for having no say on the matter and for producing "garbage arguments".
So no, it's not several months; it's barely one month
How many months should he have waited for an authoritative response?
I don't agree with Hector's response either but that has nothing to do with the fact that Linus left them alone for months to sort out between themselves when he could have simply stepped in and ended it.
it turns out that the reaction was pretty clear not "no reaction". That's the reason this thread we're talking in exists.
This thread? The one that appeared weeks after he already quit? Not helpful.
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It literally wasn't about Rust specifically though. Christoph literally said it was about anything that was not C, including assembly, C++, brainfuck, or whatever, entering the kernel. Christoph likes Rust. Christoph (rightfully) does not like mixed language codebases for projects as large and important as Linux
Not his call, as we can see now
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Gee Linus you think you could've fucking said something before it got to this point?
What do you mean? He did step in, understood absolutely no context of the issue, told everyone to shut up, and then left without any real input. Fucking joke
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What does glazer mean in this context? (English is my fourth language)
"Glazing" is slang for over-complimenting, often to an obsessive degree
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25857381
Hellwig is the maintainer of the DMA subsystem. Hellwig previously blocked rust bindings for DMA code, which in part resulted in Hector Martin from stepping down as a kernel maintainer and eventually Asahi Linux as a whole.
A lot of people commenting on this seem to have gaps in their knowledge of what happened. I highly recommend reading the linked email, as it is both short and has valuable context.
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So no, it's not several months; it's barely one month
How many months should he have waited for an authoritative response?
I don't agree with Hector's response either but that has nothing to do with the fact that Linus left them alone for months to sort out between themselves when he could have simply stepped in and ended it.
it turns out that the reaction was pretty clear not "no reaction". That's the reason this thread we're talking in exists.
This thread? The one that appeared weeks after he already quit? Not helpful.
How many months should he have waited for an authoritative response?
Well, Marcan should wait as long as feels right to him. As I said previously, I'm pretty sure he was already pissed off about previous R4L issues and he didn't quit because of this alone. I want to be clear that I'm commenting solely on the expectation of a swifter response from leadership in the original email thread and not on Marcan's decision to step down, which I can't be the judge of.
So, I expect people in places of power to take their time when they respond publicly to issues like this, for various reasons. Eg:
- they might try to resolve things in private first (seems to be the case)
- they might want to discuss with their peers to double check their decision making and to take collective action, this is especially true if the CoC committee gets involved
- they might want to chime in when people have calmed down and they expect to be able to have meaningful conversations with them
At the very least, I would have waited to see what happens with the patches if I were in his position. The review process, which kept going in the meantime, essentially sets a timer for a decision to be made. In the end, Hellwig's objections would either be acknowledged as blocking or they would be ignored. In any case there would have been a clear stance from the project's leadership. It makes sense to me to wait for this inevitable outcome before making a committal decision such as stepping down.
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A lot of people commenting on this seem to have gaps in their knowledge of what happened. I highly recommend reading the linked email, as it is both short and has valuable context.
Is there an easy way of seeing the preceding emails in a threaded format?
I read some posted yesterday that were related but it's damn confusing whether the conversation has been active in between?
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People really afraid of Rust out here.
I can relate. I can emphasize with someone who's learned every nuance of a language, and after 30-40 years suddenly these kids come in with their strange hieroglyphics slowly replacing everything you've worked on.
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Gee Linus you think you could've fucking said something before it got to this point?
Yah took him long enough and should have never got to this point. Now we have lost a contributer.
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What does glazer mean in this context? (English is my fourth language)
What does glazer mean in this context? (English is my fourth language)
English is my first language and I also wondered. The definition in the other reply to you was only added to wiktionary last year. According to know your meme, it became popular on TikTok in 2023 and allegedly originated on discord in November 2021.
(wiktionary also has another definition which I've also never heard of before which has been there since 2007 with no quotations of evidence of actual use...)
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What does glazer mean in this context? (English is my fourth language)
English is my first language and I also wondered. The definition in the other reply to you was only added to wiktionary last year. According to know your meme, it became popular on TikTok in 2023 and allegedly originated on discord in November 2021.
(wiktionary also has another definition which I've also never heard of before which has been there since 2007 with no quotations of evidence of actual use...)
A glazed donut is a pastry with a shiny coating of sugar covering it. The basic idea is that if you put someone's body-part in your mouth, for the purposes of this discussion, let's call it a "long finger", when it leaves your mouth, the wetness gives it a shiny look like it was glazed.
So to say you are glazing someone would mean you are such a fan of that person, you would be willing to make some parts of them really, really shiny with your mouth saliva.
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It literally wasn't about Rust specifically though. Christoph literally said it was about anything that was not C, including assembly, C++, brainfuck, or whatever, entering the kernel. Christoph likes Rust. Christoph (rightfully) does not like mixed language codebases for projects as large and important as Linux
Rust is straight up better than C. It's safer and less prone to errors.
It's not feasible to convert the entire Linux codebase at once. So your options are to either have a mixed codebase, or stick with effectively Cobol into 2020.
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A glazed donut is a pastry with a shiny coating of sugar covering it. The basic idea is that if you put someone's body-part in your mouth, for the purposes of this discussion, let's call it a "long finger", when it leaves your mouth, the wetness gives it a shiny look like it was glazed.
So to say you are glazing someone would mean you are such a fan of that person, you would be willing to make some parts of them really, really shiny with your mouth saliva.
Nobody needed a description that borders on erotica fiction.
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Linus ain't wrong tho
I really appreciated him saying 'I don't want yes men, I need people to call me on my bullshit, but I'm calling you out on yours'.
I read through the next few replies, and it seems like the anti-rust maintainer just has an axe to grind and can't stand people working in a language they don't understand.